The Wild, Wild Wests: The Day of the Winking Light
by SilverShadow44
Summary: Set in 1908 featuring my next gen. team of agents. Tem, Amanda and Jimmy learn that attic cleaning is not only hot, tiring and dirty work, it can be dangerous too - if the attic belonged to Artemus Gordon! But when armed criminals invade the Chicago Federal Building, a dusty relic may hold their best chance of survival . . . .
1. The Winking Light

**The Wild, Wild Wests: The Day of the Winking Light**

Secret Secret Service agent Artemus West was more than merely exhausted – he was bone-tired. Soaked with overexertion and fatigued all the way down to his skeleton. The August heat, merciless even here in normally pleasant Millwood Grove, wasn't making him feel any better, that was for sure. Getting up at the crack of dawn to move furniture – _heavy_ furniture – hadn't exactly been a treat on top of a previous day also spent moving furniture. Riding Baccarat from Aunt Kate and Uncle Jeremy's apartment to the Chicago Federal Building had seemed a relative rest break by comparison. Until, that is, he got to the Federal Building, made the mistake of sneaking a peek into the new building's gymnasium and was spotted by a martial arts instructor attempting to hammer finer points home to a class of fresh-faced Federal Investigation recruits. Tem wasn't dressed for it or prepared for it, but surely the accomplished Agent West wouldn't mind assisting?

Tem _did_ mind, but knowing that the lives of some of these future law enforcers of a brand new agency depended on what they learned here, he'd obliged. After that he barely had the energy to do the record search he'd come for and then ride Baccarat all the way back to Millwood Grove where his loving wife and her brother were waiting for him. But he shouldn't complain, Tem thought, as he sank down into the comfort of the Gordon living room's plushest chair. Amanda and Jimmy had been clearing out dangerous objects from their old family home in the name of 'Jeremy-proofing' the place so that Aunt Kate and poor, demented Uncle Jeremy could be moved in safely. This was a monumental task, and as emotionally arduous as it was physical.

Amanda, Jimmy and Tem had barely absorbed the shock of Artemus Gordon's passing from pneumonia a year earlier when the greater shock of Lily Gordon's and James West's deaths in an explosion had left them reeling. Hard to believe that terrible incident only happened a couple of months ago, so much had changed in their lives since then. Now the three orphaned survivors of the West and Gordon families called the fantastic (and classified) train Wanderer II home and soon the Pikes would be calling the Gordon residence home.

So while Tem had been working his fingers and every other part of his impressive physique to the bone, Amanda and Jimmy had been doing the same, including the potentially hazardous task of clearing out the Gordon attic. If it was hot down here, Tem could only imagine how stifling that attic was. No question that the attic would be crammed to the gills either. Tem recalled his father's chagrinned tales of how he'd kept few possessions and few changes of outfit on board the original Wanderer because Uncle Arte had taken up most of the storage space intended for both agents. Jim West had occasionally struck back at his packrat partner – they'd both enjoyed pranking each other after all. But when the two agents had chosen to live and raise their families next door to one another in Millwood Grove, those houses showed the differences of their inhabitants plainly. While the more stately West home at the top of the hill reflected the simple, neat, prairie-inspired tastes of the late Adele West, the Gordon home was a glorious clutter of objects, cozy, comfortable and crowded. It contained every relic or item Artemus and Lily Gordon had desired, including wardrobes for both that could put many clothing stores and fancy costume shops to shame.

It would be a good home for the Pikes, casual, familiar, more shielded from the weather than the West residence, and safe – once it was disarmed of the deadlier components that Artemus Gordon and yes, Jimmy too, had left scattered within. The attic was the most daunting challenge of all, and not just because it retained heat in August. Tem remembered that attic from his childhood as The Forbidden Zone. Even more Forbidden than off-limits, exotic sanctuaries such as his parents' bedroom. The Gordon attic was The Door Always Kept Locked. The Place Where No Children Were Allowed Ever. It was like Bluebeard's closet, only instead of being full of dissected wives, it was where Uncle Arte had stored some of the most dangerous mementoes from his and Jim's long and storied Secret Service careers. The biggest, most dangerous objects had been handed over to the Secret Service in Washington and elsewhere. But several smaller items that Jim and Arte hadn't necessarily wanted to trust to Washington were here in this house. And now, for Jeremy Pike's sake, those objects needed to be sorted out and moved.

Trouble is, as the younger agents had already discovered, the Gordon family had all the usual attic clutter that most families did too. Uncle Arte hadn't been any great fiend for labeling either. He'd told the kids years earlier that he'd kept a strict dividing line between 'normal stuff' and 'danger stuff,' but if so, it was a line that had existed mostly in his imagination. When the three younger agents at last pierced the dusty veil of the most outlawed place of them all using a combination of keys, lockpicks, crowbar and small amounts of explosive putty, they hadn't seen any dividing lines anywhere in the overcrowded mess. So while Tem had been doing the heavy lifting in downtown Chicago, Amanda and Jimmy had been doing a different, potentially more perilous heavy lifting here. Tem couldn't say who'd had the worst of it.

He must have looked pretty peaked, though. When he'd come in from the stable after settling Baccarat, Amanda had taken one look at him, ordered him to sit down in the living room, and had gone into the kitchen to make Tem a sandwich and a very large lemonade. Tem couldn't argue. He couldn't even focus enough to ask her what sort of day _she_ 'd had. Yes, he was definitely wiped.

As he looked over toward the dining room, Tem could see Jimmy there, fiddling with something or other. Jimmy had paid no attention at all to Tem's arrival. When Jimmy started fiddling with something he often seemed oblivious to all else. He gave Tem the smallest acknowledging dip of the head when he heard his brother-in-law groan with exhaustion and soreness though.

"Whas'sat you're working on?" Tem mumbled.

"Oh, a lamp," Jimmy explained, switching positions to show off his prize. "It's sort of gaudy, but pretty too. Must have gotten put up there when it got a little bit broken."

Tem sat up slightly to get a better look. In fact, the lamp _was_ pretty – a stained glass confection a bit in the Tiffany style if cruder. It was gaudy as well, but that would never have gotten it exiled in this household the way it would've in Jim and Adele West's home. _Nothing_ was too gaudy or flamboyant for Artemus and Lily Gordon. The theatre-loving couple had delighted in gaudiness whenever the mood struck them ('while ploughing over other people along the way' Tem's father had remarked once). But to Tem's weary eyes, it didn't appear broken. It didn't look like the sort of lamp that _could_ be broken in a less-than-obvious manner.

"S'an oil lamp, right?" he mumbled again. "Not electric? How's it broken?"

"Got a couple of panels of the stained glass missing," Jimmy explained, turning the elaborate shade around so that Tem could see a piece on the bottom row was missing, and then where another similar piece on the opposite side of the shade was also out. The missing panels might have been made of clear glass, since several of their companions were. Jimmy spun the shade around rapidly, and as he did so, the hot sunlight from the window appeared to wink through the openings and odd clear panels in the shade. "And that's another thing," Jimmy complained, causing the shade to spin around faster and faster with his hand. "The finial has to be broken too. The shade just spins around loose, but I can't figure out how to get the finial to tighten. I'm not sure how it was fastened in the first place."

Tem wasn't paying attention to his brother-in-law's explanation, though. He was too tired for that. He was watching the colorful glass lampshade spin around and around and around, with the bright light winking through it.

"I'd like to fix it, though," Jimmy said. "I know it's not practical, but it's very pretty."

The younger man gave the lampshade another touch of his hand that made the shade spin even faster. Around and around. Pretty colors, pretty lights. Winking and blinking.

"Pretty," Tem agreed.

 _So pretty_ . . . .

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

"MANDY!"

Amanda Gordon West knew that shriek of panic from her brother. This was a sound she dreaded. It was a good thing she wasn't still using the kitchen knife to cut up the sandwich she'd just made or that cry might have caused her to slice herself. Instead, she raced in from the kitchen, both hands free but ready to confront any disaster.

"Jimmy – what is it?"

She saw her brother standing white-faced near the dining room table, and her heart nearly skipped a beat as she realized what he was staring at – the chair that Tem had slumped down into several minutes before. She leaped around to the front of that chair and saw a horrible scene, her husband staring wide-eyed and sightless, motionless, jaw dropped open. No! He couldn't be d- No, wait! He was breathing! He was still breathing! Not dead! Not yet! Had he suffered a stroke? Was it his heart? What-

On the edge of instant hysteria, she saw a small glimmer of light run across Tem's face at eye level, then another glimmer. She looked behind herself to see what the source of those little beads of light were, saw the spinning lampshade and knew in an instant what had just happened.

"Jimmy! That thing is Torres' hypno-lamp! Turn it off! Turn it off!"

Jimmy gulped, looked down at the lamp on the dining room table as if seeing it for the first time, and grabbed the shade, which had already been slowing to a halt.

"But I didn't even light it!" he squeaked. Then he saw the beam of sunlight shining through the gap in the lampshade onto Tem's face and he too realized what must have happened. "Oh my god! What do we do?" He and Amanda both tried waving hands in front of Tem's unblinking, empty gaze – no result. "How do we snap him out of it?"

 _Snap him out of it_ , Amanda thought.

"That's exactly what we have to do," she said, holding out one hand just under the level of Tem's eyes while cautioning her brother to silence with the other. "Artemus West," she intoned, using a different, deeper, more commanding tone, "can you hear me?"

"Yessss . . . ." Tem rasped, still staring into space.

Amanda took a deep breath and considered her words for a moment before she spoke again.

"Artemus West," she commanded, "I am going to count to three and snap my fingers, and when you hear that snap, you will awaken from this trance with no harm done. Do you understand?"

"Yessss . . . ."

With the fingers of her other hand crossed for luck, she counted.

"One . . . . Two . . . . Three."

Snap!

The effect was instant and dramatic. Tem suddenly gasped, shook his head, and began staring around the room wildly, brain clearly working and alert once more. He seemed befuddled, no doubt wondering how his wife had managed to appear right in front of him out of nowhere.

"Wha . . . ?"

Amanda allowed herself a sigh of relief and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"You were hypnotized," she told him. "Fortunately not for more than a minute." She nodded over to where the not-so-broken-after-all stained glass lamp rested on the dining room table. "Turns out we've found the Steel Killer Torres' hypnosis device and didn't know it. Jimmy, I think we'd better regard _everything_ in that attic as suspect even if some of it does appear to be regular or familiar."

The chagrinned teenager nodded.

"But I thought it didn't work on Dad or Uncle Jim," he complained, glaring at the guilty device. "I thought they couldn't get hypnotized."

"That's because they knew what the lamp was after seeing what it had done to somebody else," she pointed out. "Dad _knew_ Torres was trying to hypnotize him and actively resisted it." Amanda saw the blush beginning to appear on her husband's cheeks and gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze. " _You_ didn't know what it was or what was happening until it was too late, so of course that wasn't your fault. And I can tell you're tired enough to fall right over." She leaned down and kissed the top of Tem's head. "No arguments, love. You stay right where you are while I bring you in that sandwich and lemonade I just made. And when you are done with that, you are taking a nap until supper, understand?"

Tem nodded stiffly. Amanda knew that gesture too. He'd be sulking at himself later, no doubt, and wanting to see if he could withstand the lamp's power on a second try, not that she intended to let him have another crack at it. She might have felt hot and sweaty earlier in the day, but the chill she'd gotten when she'd seen Tem's empty face staring out from the chair and thought for that terrifying split second that he might be dead left her shivering. This was just too close a call as far as she was concerned. No wonder her father had tried so hard to keep everyone out of that attic while he was still alive. The memory panged her with his absence.

 _I could absolutely crown you for bringing that dratted lamp into the house, Dad, but I wish you were still here. Mom too._

Amanda did her best to stay smiling as she brought Tem the sandwich and glass of lemonade. The grief was still so raw though. She loved this house, this home of many years and all the happy memories it still held for her. But she'd be glad when they wrapped up this task and returned to Wanderer II. Until then she'd be seeing, feeling her parents' shadows everywhere in the home that they'd made, in among the possessions they'd treasured. She thought Jimmy must feel the same way, and she knew that Tem had been avoiding spending any significant amount of time at that other oh-so-familiar but forever changed house just up the hill with its massive Baldwin apple tree and the four graves of cherished parents underneath its canopy.

Not that their new life was any picnic – far from. But it definitely kept them too busy to waste their time on moping or constant mourning. It gave them a sense of purpose too. There was something grimly satisfying about being able to take action against the weapons smugglers who'd killed James West and Lily Gordon – and taking action against other deserving criminals and evildoers as well. The pay and perks weren't bad either compared to their previous salaries. Being willing to risk death on a semi-regular basis in the name of justice and democracy had its advantages.

Now what to do about that dangerous lamp . . . .

They could always smash it of course. That would be the quickest and easiest expedient. But not necessarily the wisest. Amanda frowned, glancing over at the object which Tem was now glaring at resentfully while he chewed down his sandwich. Artemus Gordon sometimes pretended to be foolish, but he'd been sharply intelligent his whole life. If he'd saved this treacherous lamp rather than destroying it, there must have been a reason. He'd used it to cure the woman Torres the Steel Man had hypnotized – what was her name? Gilbert? Perhaps he'd thought the lamp might be useful for curing other victims as well? Or for hypnotizing some miscreant as an alternative to doing something even less pleasant? Once again she wished she could have just one more conversation with her father. If only she could understand . . . .

And if wishes were horses, the shared West-Gordon stable out back would burst from trying to contain them all, she told herself wryly. It was a good thing Tem had loaned old Canasta to the Secret Service for stud duties. At least Canasta would be enjoying what he was doing now, and not competing with Baccarat for Tem's attention – or Daisy's.

But in the meantime, that left the Wests with this hypnotic artifact that they needed to do _something_ with. But what? Couldn't leave it here. Probably wasn't safe to leave it up in the West house close enough for Uncle Jeremy to find. Send it on to Washington? The thought of politicians getting their hands on a mind-control device was enough to make her shudder. The idea had probably been enough to make her father shudder too. Then again, the decision might not be up to her. She knew she'd been right – Tem West wasn't going to be satisfied with any easy solutions.

"This isn't over," Tem growled at the inanimate stained glass object, getting up after finishing his sandwich and tapping at the old stained glass shade with a threatening finger. His desire to go mano-a-lampo could not have been more obvious. But as if that wasn't enough to worry about, Jimmy made the opposite choice, pulling the lamp out of reach and trying to get between it and her disgruntled husband.

"Wait a minute!" Jimmy complained. "This could be an important scientific invention!"

Men!

As usual, it was going to take a woman to be the voice of moderation and reason. Again.

"Boys!" she shouted, loud enough to get their attention. She waited a moment for Tem and Jimmy to back away from the lamp. "If you are _quite_ done arguing," – and her tone made it clear that they had darn well _better_ be done with arguing – "we are all hot, and all tired, and we have all got better things to do than let a piece of fancy furniture get between us." She used another pause and a piercing gleam of eye that even the lamp would have been hard pressed to compete with to make them stand down and stand straight like a couple of guilty schoolboys. _Thank you, Mom!_ Amanda whispered to herself and her mother's memory for her matriculation at the Lily Gordon School of Not Taking Nonsense From Anybody. "So we will not settle it today or tonight. We will get a good cold supper and sleep on it, and in the meantime . . . ."

Before either Tem or Jimmy dared voice a word of objection, Amanda took the lamp herself, lifted the shade right off of it, finial and all, and packed it into two separate packing boxes. They watched her mutely as she taped the boxes shut, took a wax pencil and labeled the boxes 'T. M. of Steel lamp 1' and 'T. M. of Steel lamp 2,' then stood back to admire her handiwork.

"There," she said. "It shouldn't do any more harm like that. Satisfied?"

Tem and Jimmy both nodded. Being satisfied even when they weren't really satisfied was a life-saving skill to have sometimes where Gordon women were concerned.

 _That takes care of that – for now,_ Amanda reassured herself. And at least divided into two separate components and boxes, that dratted lamp couldn't cause any more trouble . . . .

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

"But Mandy, you can't just interfere in the march of scientific progress!" Jimmy pleaded as his sister gripped him firmly and none too gently by the shirt collar.

"Try me."

Jimmy would like to present his case to a jury all right. Dam- uh, darn it! It wasn't fair! Just because Mandy was ten years older than he was, and a couple of inches taller, and probably a lot stronger come to think of it, and, okay, _way_ more bad-tempered, did that give her any right to push him around? Apparently _she_ seemed to think so. She was treating him as if he was a child, when in fact he was a worldly and mature man of sixteen years now. Well, maybe not _worldly_ exactly. But he had been to faraway, exotic places like New York City and Washington D.C. and Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Hope Springs, Oklahoma. And yeah, Hope Springs wasn't exactly wild and exotic, er, bad example . . . . The point was, Jimmy was _travelled_ now. He was, um, countryly. Plus he had the whole maturity thing down pat.

"Aw, c'mon," he begged. "Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top?"

"I said no."

Those cocoa-brown eyes staring back into his own were pitiless. How could she turn him down like this? Sure, Tem might be mad, but Tem was taking a nap right now and wouldn't have to know a thing about it.

"But-" The rest of his words were cut off as she held the shirt collar tight enough almost to lift him off his feet.

"The lamp stays in the boxes for now," Mandy growled, before releasing the collar suddenly enough that he had to correct his balance. "End of discussion. Do I make myself very, _very_ clear?

"Yes, Ma'am!" _Drat it, drat it, drat it_ . . . .

That was the trouble with older sisters – they never let you have any fun. Not that he had any other older sisters to compare her with, but he was pretty sure that if he did, they'd be a bunch of unscientific killjoys too. This was going to be just like the time a few weeks ago when she'd made him get rid of the explosives he'd been keeping in his underwear drawer back on the train. Just because he hadn't thought to warn her and Tem about them before she helpfully tried to put away his laundry for him . . . . Like she should have been going in his room without permission anyway! And it's not as if the railway trestle had suffered a _lot_ of damage . . . . Did she really have to be such a total grouch? All Jimmy wanted to do was try one teensy weensy experiment and see if . . . .

"I can tell what you're thinking, Jimmy," she scowled. "Don't. And don't get any ideas about playing around with the other things we find up in the attic either. Not tonight. We're none of us thinking straight enough right now. It can wait."

Something in Jimmy's face must have betrayed him, because that was when she pulled out her ultimate verbal trump card.

"It's what Mom and Dad would want."

 _Damn it._

He knew she was right, too. At least, it was what _Mom_ would have wanted - they both knew it. Now Jimmy had no choice but to behave himself. He couldn't betray Lily Gordon's memory – especially not here. Mandy knew that as well. She'd taken no joy in saying the words. As Jimmy saw her nod and walk away, she looked as tired as Tem, and sadder than she had a moment ago. Was that what being a grownup did to you? Or were they really all under the weather just like she said?

Suddenly Jimmy realized how tired he was too. It had been hot up in that attic, and dusty and dirty. He could do worse things than investigate washing himself off and taking a bit of a nap of his own before dinner. Yeah, okay, maybe Mandy had a point – not that he needed to let _her_ know that. If she wanted to be the bully, the least he could do was not encourage her to be more of one. She and Tem weren't the only ones who could act sullen when they wanted to. He could do a pretty mean sullen himself, and so that's how he acted as he made his way to his own room to rest up before supper. Push him around, would they? He'd see about that!

But he did take one backwards, wistful glimpse back at the boxes labeled T. M. of Steel lamp 1 and 2 as he went up the stairs leaving Mandy downstairs to clean up in the kitchen. Such an exciting find – so many possibilities . . . .


	2. An Uneasy Start to the Day

The thunderstorm that struck that night brought noise, bright flashes, sleeplessness, and finally some relief from the August weather. The morning air felt cleaner, fresher and cooler, though the house was still baked-in stuffy and overwarm. None of the family said much at breakfast, not because they were annoyed with one another, but because they were all so tired. Looking over at his wife, Tem thought Amanda appeared pale and peaked. Some women _tried_ to look pale and peaked, since that was the fashion of the day among the upper class. But Amanda, like Tem's own mother, had never given a thimble about being fashionable, except as required by an undercover assignment. Watching the listless way in which she ate her meal, he became concerned – and a little ashamed of his behavior the day before. All three of them had been working hard yesterday, she doing no less attic cleaning and clearing than her brother. But while he and Jimmy had let their tempers get the better of them and then gone off to take afternoon naps, she had kept right on working. _She_ hadn't gotten any nap. No, she had been the one preparing their meals, putting things in place and doing all the rest of the day's cleaning up besides. And to think that so many people called women the frail sex!

Feeling the fatigue in his own sore muscles and knowing that his less athletic brother-in-law must be feeling the same but too teenage-proud to show it, Tem came to a resolution.

" _Ahem_ ," he cleared his throat to get the others' attention. "I am making an Executive Decision!"

"Oh?" Amanda asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Not the lamp!" Jimmy begged.

"No – nothing to do with the lamp," he assured them. "I have decided for our own good, we are all to take it easy today!"

Amanda, who clearly needed a day of rest, opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to forestall any argument. Most of the time the three voted on decisions democratically, but this time he intended to take charge, just as she had yesterday.

"We need to," he said, "for Aunt Kate and Uncle Jeremy's sake as well as our own. I know we all want to help them as much as possible and get them moved in as soon as possible. But we aren't going to help them any by getting ourselves injured or making ourselves sick. I think all of us maybe overdid it yesterday. I know I could use a break and I'm betting you could too. I'm not saying we have to sit around and do nothing, but I think we should give ourselves a light workload at most, at least physically. This is supposed to be our vacation after all, and I can't think of anyone who's earned it more than us."

"That sounds . . . sensible," Amanda said slowly.

 _And not something you were expecting from a son of Jim West?_ Tem almost laughed at the thought. But he had a good dollop of his level-headed mother as well as his wild and impulsive father in him, as Amanda ought to know. Too bad he couldn't have shown more of it yesterday.

"I guess," Jimmy shrugged.

Good enough. Tem had been hoping for a more enthusiastic response, but he'd take it, and hopefully they'd all be feeling better as a result.

"So what did you want to do today?" Amanda yawned. Yes, she definitely needed some respite.

"Well," Tem considered, "maybe we could settle for a joint trip to the Federal Building – it has electric fans, by the way." _God bless the latest in modern technology!_ "And then we could drop off just one cartload more of stuff on Wanderer II. After that? We can decide later."

Tem resolved to keep a closer eye on Amanda and make sure she didn't overburden herself again. An early dinner out at a nice Chicago restaurant might be just the ticket. Too bad they'd have to shut all the windows while they were gone instead of taking advantage of the cooler air to let the house refresh. But the attic wasn't fully defanged yet. Not a good time to risk strangers getting in.

"Why the Federal Building?" Jimmy asked. "Didn't you go there yesterday?"

"Sure," he told them. "But I sort of got distracted by other things." He filled them in quickly on the impromptu hand-to-hand combat lessons he'd been asked to give. That earned him a bit more sympathy, and a couple of winces from the other two. "I did manage to get some of the files we were looking for, but probably not all. Besides, one of the State Department officials who was there asked me for some advice, and I wasn't in any shape to give it. I told him you two would be the better ones to consult anyway, whether he thought so or not."

"Whether he thought so or not," Amanda repeated, with a frown. "As in he doesn't want to consult with a woman and a ch . . . younger person," she corrected herself in time. That made Tem wince. The Gordon siblings were two of the most frighteningly competent individuals the Secret Service and the Federal government could have hoped for. But they'd already had plenty of trouble convincing others of that so far. "And what, pray tell, does this State Department official not wish to consult with Jimmy and me about?"

"Security," Tem sighed. Security setups had always been more Artemus Gordon's specialty than Jim West's, and their children followed suit. "The Federal Building is being used to temporarily house a shipment of something called Franconium hydrate that's being transferred to a government lab in Sacramento."

"Franconium hydrate!" Jimmy perked up. "That's dangerous stuff!"

"So I gather," Tem said. "Anyway, he was looking for some advice about security for it, whatever it does."

"It's a chemical derivative of Franconium that can be used to grow these small crystals which when surgically implanted in someone's brain can make them do whatever you want. Turns them sort of into living zombies," Jimmy explained. "Do you remember our Dads' story about Titus Trask and the Cadre?"

"Only vaguely," Tem admitted. He'd have to look up Jimmy's 'story file' on that one.

"I do," Amanda whispered. "It's worse than that hypno-lamp. Much worse!" She shook her head. "And this fellow needs a security system set up for it?"

"Uh, yeah. Just temporarily," Tem muttered. "Or at least some suggestions for one, assuming he'll take them."

"From you, maybe. Probably not from me or Jimmy," she said. "But we'd better try and see what's what down there, and what we can do to make sure the Franconium hydrate remains in safe hands. You'll just have to be our front man again." She sighed with a wan smile. "You certainly have a way of picking our day-off activities, m'love!"

"Sorry," he told them both. "But at least it's not heavy lifting or attic cleaning! And did I mention they have electric fans? And a vendor who sells ice cream right around the street corner?"

"Now you're talking!" Jimmy grinned. Though whether Jimmy's enthusiasm was for electric fans, ice cream, or a dangerous rare chemical, Tem preferred not to speculate . . . .

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

Leave it to Tem West to come up with a really good idea that might potentially mingle with a really bad one, Amanda thought. She agreed with her husband 110 percent that they all needed a rest. She wasn't certain she could take another day like yesterday, and she welcomed the idea of electric fans and ice cream. But taking her teenage brother's mind off of one dangerous scientific object by piquing his interest in something even more dangerous . . . . And Jimmy _was_ interested. At Tem's suggestion, the younger man had recalled for them as much about their fathers' 'Cadre' case as he could, and she'd racked her brain to do the same, though her head wasn't feeling its best this morning. The file box containing Jimmy's transcriptions of their fathers' stories – the closest thing they had this side of the bureau's classified archives in Washington - was back on board Wanderer II. They'd be able to retrieve the relevant envelopes when they got today's cartload of stuff on board the train later on. But they'd already decided to do the stop at the Federal Building along the way first. Given the dangers posed by the Franconium hydrate, that errand had to take precedence.

Amanda thought about what they most needed or ought to bring with them. By mutual agreement, they'd already decided that the cartload would be a light one – no heavy objects. By far less mutual agreement, she and Tem had decided that the lamp, in its two boxes, would be part of that load. Their goal had been to remove dangerous objects from the house, after all, and the lamp certainly qualified. Once on board the train, Amanda planned to have a word with the engineers Cole and Micah about making sure the lamp was put someplace where her brother could _not_ get at it. Jimmy could protest and sulk all he liked, but he was outvoted on this one.

Coming up with impromptu suggestions and maybe even equipment to protect a rare and perilous chemical was quite another matter. Tem didn't need to say anything more about the State Department official or his attitudes – she'd encountered plenty of the type. She'd have to listen and observe what she could, then make her recommendations to Tem, who at least would be listened to. She herself wasn't even welcome to enter some sections of the grand building on account of her sex. It was small consolation to know that Tem was just as annoyed with this state of affairs. And as to how sixteen year-old Jimmy might be treated . . . .

might be treated . . . .

might be treated . . . .

Amanda reached out and used her hand to brace herself against the kitchen counter she'd been standing near. For just a moment she'd felt dizzy. What on earth had caused that? She shook her head to try and clear it, but that technique didn't work as well as she would have liked. Could she be coming down with something? She hoped not. Her or one of the other two getting sick was the last thing they needed right now – and the last thing Aunt Kate or Uncle Jeremy needed too. Tem had been right about that. Maybe it was just fatigue, or yesterday's heat. Still so warm inside. Maybe she needed to get some fresh air. On less-than-steady legs, she made her way out to that familiar, beloved front porch with the wide wooden swing bench that she'd spent so much time growing up on. She sank down onto the bench, closed her eyes and took in a deep breath of the storm-cooled air. She hoped this was enough to cure her ills. She couldn't have had her eyes shut for more than a few seconds when she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder, and heard the familiar voice that went with it.

"'manda? Are you all right?"

Tem sounded concerned for some reason.

"Yes," she lied. "A little tired, that's all."

"Look, if you're not feeling up to going into Chicago, we can-"

"No." She put a hand on his arm and gazed up. "I'll be fine. And protecting that chemical is important. Besides, I was rather looking forward to the ice cream!" She smiled. "So who's buying?"

"I am, of course," he grinned back. "You think I don't know you're your father's daughter?"

They both had a small laugh at that, remembering her father's famous (or infamous) habit of sticking James West with the tab for tips during the men's younger days. Amanda wrapped one finger around a loose strand of her curly dark hair – another inherited trait from Artemus Gordon. Amanda's head _did_ feel a little clearer as she sat up straight and once more reassured her worried husband. She did her best to reassure herself too. It was all right. The lighter day's workload and cooler air would do her a world of good, and she'd be feeling all better tomorrow. She waited until Tem had gone back to loading the horse cart to allow herself a frown and a moment of doubt.

 _I_ will _be fine – won't I?_

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

Ice cream!

Jimmy hadn't had any ice cream since . . . since forever, he decided, which meant at least three weeks ago! A rare treat indeed, rarer than in his childhood, which was even more forever ago. If Tem and his sister were buying, he supposed he could forgive them for _some_ things. Not about taking the lamp away but, well, he'd be willing to forgive them for something or other else when he figured out what that was. In the future.

As for the Franconium hydrate, Jimmy would be fascinated to learn what the California lab's uses for it were. And to think that the stuff was right here in Chicago! Exciting, but sort of terrifying too. He trusted that the scientists were not going to use the substance to grow mind control crystals that could explode inside brains and kill people with the tweet of a whistle. Ick. Jimmy remembered that bedtime story more vividly than most because it had given him nightmares, and hadn't his Mom lectured his Dad about _that_ afterwards? Jimmy had needed to wheedle for three straight evenings after before Dad would tell him another one of those special, true bedtime tales. But just the thought of how close Uncle Jim had come to getting one of those Franconium crystals surgically implanted in _his_ brain still gave Jimmy the shivers. Thank heaven Jimmy's Dad had been such a competent sneak!

Anyway, that was neither here nor there now. Titus Trask was long dead and gone and a person would have to have some other form of brain damage to want to copy _his_ crimes. Obviously, the transport of the Franconium hydrate meant that some other exciting new applications for the derivative had been discovered, and he, James Ulysses Gordon, might be in on the inside scoop! That was as thrilling as the other sort of scoop he anticipated getting later on. Maybe even with Sundae sauce and whipped cream. His day might be looking up after all.

If only he could get Mandy to stop treating him like a child . . . .

Jimmy was helping to load the horse cart, doing his very best to look sullen and mature while contemplating the day ahead when a tap on the shoulder forced his train of thought over onto the siding. It was Tem. Well, if his bossy brother-in-law thought Jimmy was going to overlook being outvoted . . . .

Jimmy turned around, trying very hard to project Resentment with a capital R on his face. He might have succeeded, but Tem's own expression made him swallow that fast. Their fearless leader was looking Worried with a capital W. That didn't happen too often, and when it did, it always meant something bad, as in worse than ice cream place being closed bad. Tem hadn't looked concerned this morning when he'd been talking about Franconium hydrate and not remembering the Cadre story. But he sure looked fretful about something now.

"Listen," Tem said, "I know we all got a little hot under the collar yesterday, but I want you and I to be on our best behavior today. I don't think your sister's feeling well and I want her to take it real easy, okay? Not force her to referee us so much."

 _Ha_! As if anyone could stop Mandy from refereeing everything under the sun! She was _made_ to be bossy, just like Grandma Pru. Thinking that, though, made Jimmy feel guilty. Grandma Pru had died when he was only seven and she'd always been nice to him, well mostly. But Mandy . . . .

"I mean it, Jimmy," Tem said.

Drat it – it wasn't bad enough that Mandy had the ability to read his mind, now Tem was picking it up too?

"You've got to be kidding me," Jimmy murmured, noticing how low Tem was keeping his voice. "Mandy's never been sick a day in her life! Well, hardly ever. Not like me." He didn't try to hide his jealousy.

Tem's face and manner said that he was having none of it. But what brought back the little prickle of alarm to Jimmy was the fact that his brother-in-law really _did_ look worried. Tem nodded back to the Gordon house front porch where Jimmy noticed for the first time his big sister sitting on the bench swing and looking a little . . . peculiar.

"I've known her my whole life," Tem reminded him. "She thinks she's fooling me. She isn't. So let's just do our best to make things as easy as possible, all right? I – I promise I'll try to hold my temper a bit better if you'll do this for me. For her. Please."

 _Oh, jeepers._

Jimmy nodded.

Now _he_ was starting to feel worried. Was it actually possible for Mandy to be ill? He never would have thought so. His sister – the grizzly bear in human form ill? The same woman who took on and took down deadly criminals with a whack of her parasol? Okay, it was kind of a tricky parasol, but still . . . .

What if it _was_ possible?

Tem went back to packing and fetching things for the cart, but now that Jimmy was paying more attention, he saw how his brother-in-law was keeping an eye on Mandy. And Mandy didn't appear alert enough to notice. That wasn't like her at all either.

Jimmy shivered.

It was true.

Something _was_ wrong.

How could he have been so unobservant? What if this was a, you know, _bad_ something wrong?

It couldn't be!

It couldn't . . . .

Mom and Dad were gone.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Adele were gone.

Jimmy didn't have much more family left to lose.

And he'd been fantasizing about having ice cream? A colder reality was smacking him square in the face.

Yes, he _was_ going to be nicer to Mandy today. Because she just _had_ to get better. She had to. And hadn't he resolved to forgive her and Tem for some unspecified future something?

Mandy _had_ to get better, because her not getting better was the one thing he really might not be able to forgive her for – or forgive himself. From today forward, he was going to be a nicer person. More considerate. Less resentful. Resentments were for babies. He, James Ulysses Gordon was an adult, almost. He was turning over a new leaf, starting today, and he was doing it for Mandy and Tem. He'd be the best, most mature James Ulysses Gordon he could possibly be.

So there!


	3. Something Rotten in Chicago

The cart was done being loaded, and Tem hoped the day would start to improve from here on out. At least Jimmy was back to being his polite (mostly) and helpful self. One thing Tem really appreciated about the younger man, aside from his having whip-smart intelligence, Jimmy could be counted on to be grown-up and responsible in the clinch. Tem had always tried to be that way himself, though recalling his own teenage years sometimes made him cringe. What a young hot-head he had been! Good to know Jimmy wasn't that same way at all.

Tem frowned as he took another quick check on Amanda before telling her they were ready to head out. She was keeping her eyes closed whenever she thought she wasn't being observed, still sitting on the porch swing, still clearly feeling drowsy. He almost wished he hadn't mentioned anything about the Franconium hydrate, important as that shipment was. She could be staying home today, keeping cool on that porch swing then, but he knew she wouldn't now. She was a trouper, just like her parents. Tem hoped she wasn't coming down with a summer cold or fever. Those could be a real nuisance. Oh well, this too would pass. If the three of them could survive what they went through in Tennessee two short months ago, today would be a cakewalk.

"Ready?" he asked her, taking Amanda's hand to help her up from the bench.

"Of course," she said, giving him another one of those confident smiles that wasn't fooling him a bit.

Her hand didn't feel any warmer to the touch than usual, he noted with relief. She seemed the tiniest bit unsteady as they walked to the cart together hand in hand, but then, anyone who'd been sitting (or slumping) in the same position for half an hour without getting up would be stiff, so that was normal too. Good – he had probably been worrying for nothing and what the gentler workload began, electric fans, ice cream and a good dinner at Au Boeuf Bistro or someplace followed by an early bedtime would complete.

Jimmy had come around as thoroughly as Tem could desire too. He was full of care and solicitousness, offering his sister an additional hand up onto the cart's front seating while taking up a rear seat behind the baggage for himself without complaint. If anything, he was being a little bit _too_ solicitous. Amanda, in spite of her earlier wan behavior, noticed it as well. Either Jimmy was up to something – unlikely, Tem thought, since Jimmy had never been the bad boy type on purpose – or, more likely, he was simply overdoing what Tem had asked. Must have felt as bad about yesterday as Tem had.

"Exactly how much ice cream _did_ you offer to bribe him with?" Amanda whispered to her husband.

"An entire bucket, apparently," Tem sighed. If so, it would be worth it not to have to cope with a sulky teenager. Yep – assuming that neither one of the Gordon siblings attempted to murder or maim an obnoxious, narrow-minded State Department official, things should be smooth sailing from here on out.

The drive into Chicago was peaceful, quiet, and as usual scenic. Tem never tired from the steady clop-clop sound of a horse's hooves, even if cart dray wasn't Baccarat's favorite role to play and he'd be making Tem pay for it with peppermint candies later. Diamond also. This was so much nicer than trying to drive around in that smelly, noisy, potentially dangerous road machine that Amanda had taken a shine to though. This way she didn't have to drive the auto-mobile and could relax the entire way into the city. Tem didn't mind feeling her head resting on his shoulder. Not one bit. Poor 'manda. That thunderstorm must have kept her awake all night while he'd slept like a rock for at least part of it. And as for Jimmy, everyone knew he could've slept through the Wanderer II derailing and falling into a marble quarry during a dynamite blasting operation. Teenagers. Best to let her get a few winks now so they'd be able to benefit from her astute advice in setting up security for the F.h. at their destination.

When the destination did start coming into view, Tem nudged Amanda to make sure she was awake for that part. No matter how many times he arrived at it, Tem still marveled at the fantastic monument that was the Chicago Federal Building. He didn't know which part impressed him the most – the classical colonnaded front façade centerpiece that made him think of the Parthenon in Athens, or the mighty dome rising up even higher behind it like a Renaissance Cathedral in Italy. He'd never been to Greece or Florence, but this American masterpiece of architecture always took his breath away. Too bad the Secret Service and new Federal Investigation bureau business took place in a cramped wing at the very back of the mighty structure. The courts and the Post Office got the glamour parts of the building, and other agencies the choicest bits of what remained. The poor cousin law enforcement divisions had to settle for servants' quarters and entrance. Still, it made a man proud to go in there, even from the back.

Or a woman too. Amanda enjoyed drinking in the view of Chicago's mighty temple of Justice as much as he did. Today, he observed happily, was no exception. He always took a route into the neighborhood that gave them/him the best Adams and Dearborn street view, then drove or rode around to the back. She might not have been mesmerized by the lamp, but the Fed could work its own spell. He heard her enraptured intake of breath as she first caught sight of it. The glorious view didn't last long, as they made their way around to the area at the back of the mighty edifice where they could leave their horse cart parked under the watchful gaze of a security guard.

The smoothness of their arrival didn't last either. Tem jumped down as soon as he parked the cart and horses and hastened over to the other side to gallantly offer his wife a lift down. She usually didn't wait and jumped off under her own power with a bit of a suffragette smirk on her face, but today she waited. Jimmy practically tripped on the pavement scrambling his own way down to assist. Poor kid – his heart was in the right place, but the 125 lb, gawky, not-exactly-muscular youth wouldn't have been equal to the task if he had tried lifting her. A couple of inches shorter than Amanda herself, he'd have been easier for _her_ to lift. Amanda was tall and heavier than she looked because, as Tem well knew, she was solid muscle under her feminine exterior. But Tem was even solid-er, his father's son. He had no trouble lifting her and setting her down gently upon the pavement. She wasn't the picture of grace this morning though, and stumbled almost immediately.

"Amanda . . . ."

"No, I'm fine," she said, though he was sure she wasn't. She shook her head, a gesture he'd already seen her make several times today. Headache? "Let's just get this over with," she whispered. She still wasn't any warmer to the touch than usual, or paler, but now he felt more concerned than he had been only a few minutes ago. Perhaps both siblings were coming down with something? Jimmy _did_ look a bit pale. Amanda was very insistent about going into the building and attending to the security task nevertheless. With Tem taking her arm on one side, and Jimmy atypically offering her his support on the other side, the three of them went in through wide rear doors. Tem now wanted nothing more than to get Amanda seated in front of an electric fan with no more taxing a job to do than look through a few files. Maybe he and Jimmy could handle the security setup by themselves.

"Well, well! Mr. West," a familiar voice called out to him. The State Department official Tem had been speaking with the day before was in the back hallway, conferring with the instructor of the rookie Federal Investigation agents. Flemings, that's what the State guy's name was, Tem recalled, and the instructor – he was Wickersham, a good man, from what Tem had seen. The same could not be said for Flemings, who cleared his throat and frowned in a meaningful way as he caught sight of Amanda and Jimmy. "You've brought your family with you, I see."

"I know we're a bit unconventional," Tem said, putting his best face on it. "But these two were trained by my father and by Artemus Gordon themselves. They're far more expert at the, uh, subject you asked me to look into than anyone else I can think of. Unfortunately, I don't believe my wife is feeling very well today, so if we could perhaps find someplace to sit down and discuss the matter, I'd-"

"Hmmpphh!" Flemings coughed. "Exactly the reason I don't like to include the weaker sex in my dealings!"

Tem flinched, but Amanda made no move to insert herself into the conversation. She was either more ill than Tem had realized, or being unnaturally good at keeping herself under control. Tem heard Jimmy gasp, as shocked as Tem himself was at Amanda being _this_ quiet when faced with a rude provocation.

"'manda?" Tem asked.

She blinked her eyes and looked up at him as if she had no idea what had just been said. Those eyes were unfocused, and now that he looked a bit closer, Tem could see that her pupils were dilated.

"Mmm?" she asked, confused.

Okay, that was it. Something was _definitely_ wrong with Amanda, and Tem was very definitely going to do something about it.

"Excuse me," he turned to Wickersham as the friendlier party present. "Isn't there a nurse stationed in this section of the building?"

"Yes," Wickersham said, picking up on the fact that there might be a genuine medical emergency going on here, while the State Department official continued to look rude and officious. "It's right down this way – I can lead you to it."

Amanda, disoriented, tried to pull away from her husband and Jimmy's grip and stand up for herself. Jimmy didn't help matters any by trying to yank her even closer to him and suddenly starting to behave as if he was having hysterics.

"Oh, please, Mandy!" Jimmy cried. "Please don't be dying!"

 _That_ got a startled reaction out of her and Tem both.

"Jimmy, what?" Amanda asked. "Dying?"

"Who said anything about dying?" Tem demanded. "I think it might be-"

He didn't have time to complete the sentence as Amanda tugged free of her brother and stumbled a bit.

"Jimmy," she told him, "for heaven's sake, I am not . . . ." Her voice petered out and she shook her head again. ". . . . not . . . . not . . . . dy . . . ."

Tem gripped her firmly and scooped her up as she collapsed unconscious in his arms.

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

The ceiling was very white and had a slight crack beginning in the plaster of one corner, but why was she looking up at it? And ohhhh, could she feel a headache coming on! Had someone sapped her from behind? The last thing she could remember was entering the Fed with Tem and Jimmy, and she thought she'd heard someone say something about her dying. Was she dead?

No, no, couldn't be. Not just because she was breathing and could move her fingertips against the soft fabric underneath her, but because from a theological perspective she didn't want to believe that dead people felt as bad as she was feeling right now. She hadn't suffered a hangover this severe since her college days, and that hung-over sort of headache had only happened twice. If that wasn't Mother Nature's way of warning people off whiskey, she didn't know what was. Ouch.

"Mandy, you're awake!" she heard her little brother cry with relief. A bit too loudly. That's right. He had thought she was dying for some reason. She was pretty sure she wasn't. Might be wishing to do so just a smidge though.

"Softer, Jimmy," she whispered. "Have you got any aspirin?"

"I have some," an unfamiliar female voice said. Gentle woman's hands helped her to sit up and then went away, to return with a glass of water and the requisite medicine. Amanda didn't look up to see the face, but the hands were doing the work of a holy blessed saint, as Aunt Kate would have said. Amanda took the glass of water and swallowed the aspirin as quickly as possible, determined to keep it down in spite of a slight feeling of nausea.

"Where am I?" Amanda asked. "How did I get here?"

"We're in the nurse's station," Jimmy explained in more hushed tones. "Tem thinks you were under the influence of some sort of drug, because your eyes were dilated and then you passed out. He carried you here, but then Mr. Wickersham – he's the guy with Mr. Bonaparte's new bureau – said there was some kind of emergency alert from upstairs where the . . . _you know_ . . . was being stashed. He told me to stay here and guard you with my life while he went with Mr. Wickersham and Mr. Flemings to see what it was."

Wickersham? Flemings? She had certainly missed something interesting while she was out. But her headache and nausea, bad as they were, had already begun to fade. She was convinced that she not only would live, she might even appreciate the fact in another ten minutes.

The nurse, Mrs. Prynn, helped Amanda into a full sitting position, but kept a sheet tucked over Amanda's legs and wasn't consenting to the young man in her office coming any closer to her patient.

"I'm afraid I loosened and removed some of your outer things, my dear," the nurse said with an apologetic tone. "It's the standard procedure in fainting cases. So often young women wear their corsets much too tight, you know."

Amanda took a quick inventory of her person. She still had her blouse on, and she hadn't been wearing a corset, just less restrictive undergarments above the waist. The nurse might not have approved, but then, Mrs. Prynn had probably never been in any knife fights where maximum mobility of the upper body was a survival consideration. What Amanda no longer had on, though, in addition to her shoes, was her skirt and petticoat. She still had one more layer of undergarment left to get through after those were set aside, but she could see where the nurse's modest mores might not be forgiving of her brother seeing her like this. Mrs. Prynn needn't have worried. Lord knows Jimmy was quite embarrassed enough the other day when the heat of the attic had forced Amanda to set her heavy skirt aside and work with only her petticoat and the last underlayer protecting her from view. He'd seen her in that level of undress before or the equivalent, which was her swimming costume. It safely mortified him.

"I would have you put your things back on now," the nurse continued. "But I'm afraid they have the most dreadful stain on them. We can send for some other garments if you like so these can be washed . . . ."

"Stain?" Surely she hadn't bled or – now _she_ was mortified at the thought – been incontinent or, um, worse?

"It appears to be on the inside of your skirt, somehow, and it's soaked through to your petticoat," Mrs. Prynn explained. "It isn't blood. Quite thick and peculiar. I'm not sure what it is." The nurse frowned, showing Amanda the dark stain on the dark skirt fabric. To illustrate further, she began rubbing the stain between her fingers. "You . . . see . . . ."

Amanda might have seen, but the nurse didn't for much longer. Just as she got those last two words out, Mrs. Prynn's eyes glazed over and she collapsed in a faint.

Knickers be damned! Amanda cast the sheet aside and leapt up. Jimmy had moved quickly to keep Mrs. Prynn's head from clomping onto the floor hard, but he wasn't strong or fast enough to do much better than that. His own eyes were wide with bewilderment. But Amanda's head was starting to work again like it usually did, and now her mysterious illness was beginning to make sense.

"What? How?" Jimmy stammered.

"Don't touch the skirt!" Amanda cautioned him. "I don't think that's an ordinary stain!"

"I wasn't planning to," Jimmy said. "Do you think that's what knocked you out too?"

"I'm not sure yet, but it might be." Gingerly, Amanda wrapped a corner of the infirmary bedsheet around her hand and used it like a mitt to pick up one edge of her skirt _not_ near the stain and move it away from Mrs. Prynn. She piled that and the petticoat in one corner of the floor while Jimmy looked for the smelling salts in this infirmary to use them on the nurse. "Jimmy, you worked with Dad in his lab all the time the last few years. When we were in the attic yesterday, did you see anything like the stuff he used to use to come up with his various knockout gas concoctions?"

Jimmy considered for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"There was some stuff like that, right next to a couple of broken test tubes . . . . Oh!" The idea occurred to him at the same time she was formulating it herself.

Yes. It all added up. She had taken off her outer skirt in the attic yesterday and dumped it on the floor to work in just her petticoat. The inside-out skirt must have come to rest in a dense puddle of whatever goo had escaped from those broken test tubes. In the dim attic light, Amanda hadn't noticed any stain before she put that skirt back on downstairs last night and donned it again this morning. Generally, her father's various sleep gas concoctions needed some sort of liquid to activate them. Amanda had provided the liquid herself. Even without the skirt on, her petticoat had become thoroughly damp with sweat up there. When she dressed herself, her sweat-soaked petticoat had drenched the stain, and the stain had started to drench back. If not for the petticoat forming a temporary protective layer between the chemical blotch and her bare legs, she'd probably be in a coma by now.

 _Another one to thank you for, Dad . . . ._ Amanda thought, then thought the better of it. It wasn't as if Artemus Gordon hadn't tried darned hard to keep his children out of the attic. He couldn't have anticipated their desperate need to clean it now. She allowed herself a dry chuckle.

"What's so funny?" Jimmy asked.

"I've heard women get compliments before by being told their dress was a real knockout," she said. "I think this one definitely takes the prize!"

Jimmy shrugged. He had found the smelling salts, and now with their roles reversed, Amanda tried to help the nurse into a sitting position while he attempted to revive her with the salts. Mrs. Prynn roused to semi-consciousness at best, then conked out again. By directly rubbing her fingers back and forth through the stain, she must have unwittingly given herself a concentrated dose of the very old Artemus Gordon Special Reserve.

"We'll have to take the skirt and petticoat to Wanderer II's lab, of course," Amanda considered. "I'll bet it _is_ one of his old formulations. And this means the attic will need a thorough – and _very_ careful – scrubbing top to bottom. Maybe a bit of reflooring. There's no telling how much spilled chemical might be up there."

Jimmy groaned.

"I know, I know," she told him. "But it's got to get done. Safely too. This may be a bigger job than we can handle on our own. But if you and Tem thought I was dying or anything like that . . . ." She shook her head, but not drowsily this time.

Jimmy sighed with relief at that, and went from groaning to grinning. Well, it was touching to know he cared, even if he had been jumping to conclusions a bit.

"And now I'd better . . . ." Amanda started to say something as the door to the infirmary opened. She was acutely aware that she was half-undressed and no longer covered by a bedsheet. That wasn't what concerned her. What concerned her was the gun being pointed in her direction by the very unfriendly looking man in the infirmary's doorway. One distinct advantage to having Nurse Prynn still sprawled on the floor and her own state of undress revealing most of her from the waist down, it caught the gunman as off-guard as he had caught her. By chance, Jimmy was standing behind the open door in the tiny little room in such a way that the gunman didn't see him yet either. Amanda, thinking on the fly, hand-signaled to Jimmy not to move, not to speak. He was temporarily concealed where he was, and he didn't know what he was concealed from, but he had been trained well enough to know how to act in this situation.

The gunman wolf-whistled and leered at Amanda's shapely bare legs.

"Well, well, well, doll face! Looks like I came to the right place!" he chuckled. "Too bad I got to bring you back to the boss. You 'n' me could have some fun in here with the nursy out!" He gestured with the gun barrel toward the patient bed behind her. _Aha. An idiot._ Amanda knew the type. She had little respect for men who used their guns as pointers instead of remembering to keep them on their target. But such idiots were useful that way.

"Oh!" she gasped, and crossed her arms over her body, pretending to be horrified at being caught by a man in such a half-naked state.

"C'mon, doll," he said, waggling and carelessly gesturing with the gun again, "I got to take you for a walk upstairs."

"But – but surely you'll allow me to get dressed first!" she protested, eyes wide and frightened. One of the handier skills Amanda had learned from her mother Lily was the ability to blush on command, and she was using that ability right now. "Please!" she begged. _Don't see Jimmy! Don't see Jimmy!_ she was thinking at her assailant as hard as she could.

"Yeah, yeah, all right," the gunman (who she now thought she recognized) sneered. "Make it quick."

She intended to. Time for one hell of a dangerous field experiment.

Picking up her heavy outer skirt as carefully as she could by the edges not near the stain, she rolled her hands up into the clean parts of the fabric so that she was holding it almost like a very thick, awkward garrote with the stained portion pointing outward toward the gunman's face. The gunman, no gentleman, wasn't taking his eyes off her. He intended to enjoy the view. Amanda intended to send him to dreamland. He walked in closer toward her, keeping his other hand on the doorknob, with her batting her eyelashes and doing her very best to look like the scared little mouse she wasn't. She could see that Jimmy now knew something of the danger they were in, might be able to see the gunman's hand, or at least the tip of the muzzle. With the slightest nod of her head and movement of her eyes, she gestured to her brother to make a noise so she could make her move.

He did and she did.

Jimmy coughed – something he was _very_ practiced at. The surprised gunman turned his head and stepped forward off balance to see what or who might be behind the door and let his gun hand swing carelessly away from the person he should have been watching. Amanda was on him in a split second, elbowing the gun hand back and forcing the stained section of skirt over his mouth and nostrils. The gunman's eyes widened, but they didn't stay that way. He passed out and dropped to the floor like a stone, thankfully without getting off a single shot.

"Mandy!" Jimmy gasped. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she nodded grimly. "But I don't think anyone else in this wing of the Federal Building is." She cast her skirt aside once more and pulled the unconscious thug further into the room. "Close the door, Jimmy. We've got a really major problem on our hands, and a volunteer for giving me a new outfit."

Jimmy closed the door as instructed and gaped at the volunteer she was referring to.

"Who is he? He doesn't look like one of the Federal Investigators."

"He isn't one," Amanda told him. "The name is Joey Rock-fingers, and he's an enforcer for a mob boss Tem and I dealt with in San Francisco. Someone from that mob must have found out on the California end about the Franconium hydrate being transported to Sacramento and decided to arrange a little alternate transportation for it." With help from her brother she began stripping the outer clothing off of the criminal and then tearing the infirmary bedsheet into strips to tie him up with. A rolled bandage found in the infirmary's small cabinet made a suitable gag and Amanda put bandage tape over his eyes for good measure. She knew they had to work quickly. Someone had sent him to this room, and that someone would be wondering where he was. She dressed herself in Joey Rock-finger's outfit and holstered his gun at her shoulder. Not very ladylike, but then, neither was she. Fortunately, Jimmy was smart enough to realize the situation and the need for haste as much as she did.

"Upstairs, he said," she murmured. "And you said Tem and those two other men, Flemings and Wickersham went up there somewhere? Because of an emergency summons?"

Jimmy nodded. Here was an emergency all right.

"We have to assume they're all prisoners by now and that someone told this guy's boss where we were. Tem wouldn't have allowed that goon to come here after us if he could prevent it. That means they've got him." Because she wasn't going to allow herself to think of the alternative – that he was already . . . . No! She couldn't afford to think that. Her focus had to be on rescuing him and the Franconium hydrate and on alerting the authorities to the fact that something was very, very wrong in this place.

"But this is the Federal Building!" Jimmy whispered in shocked tones. "Who invades the Federal Building?"

"Someone who wants Franconium hydrate very badly would be my guess," she answered. "This is one small section of the bigger building, and it's a section that can easily be locked and shut off from the rest of the complex. No one going to the Post Office or the Law Courts is going to be looking for any trouble back here. No one would suspect anybody _could_ make trouble back here, which is what helps make this a perfect target."

"So now what do we do now?"

"Now," she said, "we find and free Tem if we can. Keep ourselves out of the hands of any more gunsels if we can. And we alert folks on the outside so that criminals don't get away with stealing that dangerous chemical. But we have to find a way to do it so that whoever's behind this doesn't kill any hostages they have." _Please!_

"We don't know how many of them there are, or where they are," Jimmy pointed out gloomily. "And we've only got one weapon."

"No," she corrected him, looking over at where she'd cast her skirt. "We have at least two of them."

[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]

If he ever lived long enough to look back and write his memoirs, Jimmy Gordon thought, the time he fought a bunch of bad guys by using a woman's stained skirt and petticoat was NOT going to be a chapter in it! Talk about embarrassing! It was bad enough being treated like a toddler all the time. If his friend and fellow young scientist Oscar Montague ever heard about this, Jimmy would never live it down!

The rolled-up skirt wasn't the most reassuring weapon either. Held very carefully between hands covered by gloves that he and Mandy had scrounged in the infirmary, it _was_ a weapon. And if Jimmy had to, he bet that tossing the skirt, with its thick blob of chemical residue, into a bucket of almost any kind of liquid – water, preferably – would cause it to produce one really huge cloud of sleep gas. But that was a one-shot deal to be used as a last resort. They'd both agreed that Mandy should keep the gun. She was by far the better marksman, uh, markswoman, and she was an experienced, competent Secret Service agent who'd already tackled more dangerous assignments than you could shake a stick at, while he, Jimmy Gordon, was just cutting his teeth. He hadn't aimed at living (or dying) the life of a field agent until his mother and Uncle Jim were both murdered only a few months ago. He'd wanted to be a great scientist. Now he had to figure out a way to survive so he could be both.

At his big sister's side, he snuck as quietly as he could down a corridor that led from the small federal law enforcement section of the Chicago Federal Building to another section that housed other government agencies. Just as he and Mandy feared, there were another couple of armed goons standing sentry duty in front of a locked set of double doors, effectively blocking their way. They'd already succeeded in knocking out at least two other bad guys in other hallways with Mandy doing an admirable job of walking like the mob tough whose clothes she was wearing, face tucked into a turned-up jacket collar, taking her turn distracting them while Jimmy anesthesia-ambushed them from behind. But those creeps had been stationed solo and armed only with knives. Mandy had taken one knife and Jimmy the other, but he felt even more useless with bladed weapons than he did with bullet-firing ones. Why, oh why hadn't he brought some of his dazzler balls or scientific gadgets with him today?

 _Because you thought you were going for ice cream . . . ._

He and Mandy ducked back around the corner while they remained unseen. Two men, together, armed with rifles and probably other guns and weapons – not single guards so easily double-teamed. It didn't look like there'd be any skirting this issue.

"Drat," he swore quietly, under his breath.

Mandy didn't swear. The big sister was back to being her old self again, which in this case meant silent, focused, calm and professional. He wondered if he'd ever learn to be that way. Tem had tried explaining it to him once. When the chips were _really_ down, Mandy somehow managed to put all her emotions away, like folding up a handkerchief and putting it in her purse. She didn't get panicked – she got dangerous. He'd told Jimmy that their fathers could be the same way when they'd had to be, and that was a part of how they'd managed to accomplish incredibly dangerous missions and stunts that no one else could, or had the courage to. It was like they didn't let their emotions get in the way at all. But how the heck did you do that? Tem admitted that he hadn't quite figured out the technique himself yet, but Jimmy thought his brother-in-law must be real close to it. Jimmy didn't want to let anyone down, but he didn't know how to be not scared. Not yet. He'd have been crazy with terror right now if not for his sister at his side.

Mandy signaled silently for the two of them to head back the way they came. They'd already located the stairs leading up, though presumably that way might be double guarded too near the upstairs portion, which was where the leader of the gang and his goons would be holding their hostages, and also be at their strongest. Two hallway sentries down, but access to the forward part of the building hopelessly blocked. No extra guns and not nearly enough special equipment between these two Secret Secret Service agents to stand a realistic chance of succeeding with a frontal attack. Not even a handy-dandy disguise kit on them.

"I hate to say it, Jimmy," Mandy whispered to him after they'd managed to duck into a broom closet unseen. "But we're going to have to get out to the back entrance where we parked the horse cart somehow and send you to get help."

There weren't any windows on this lower portion of the back building wing that they could escape through. The windows were all on the upper floors – not accessible from the sidewalk for, ironically, security reasons. Jimmy knew also it was the back entrance now or nothing. But . . . .

"Me?" he whispered. "Why are you sending me to get away?" He expected the reason to be something to do with Mandy's overprotectiveness or because she thought he was still a child. That wasn't the answer he got.

"It's because the authorities will trust the message if it comes from you. You're young, but not _too_ young, and you're the right gender to get them to listen. The people whose help we'll need aren't going to just dismiss you or accuse you of having hysteria."

 _I'll be plenty hysterical if I think I'm leaving you and Tem behind and I might never see you again!_ he thought.

"But . . . what about you?"

"I have to stay here and do what I can," she sighed. "I'll be careful – I promise. Please, Jimmy. I know I can count on you. Tem's counting on you too."

At least, they both _hoped_ he still was. She didn't have to say that. They could see it in each other's eyes.

Jimmy nodded. She was right. He'd do everything in his power not to let them down now.

As quickly and as quietly as possible, they left the broom closet and headed for the rear entrance. Jimmy swore he could feel his heart pounding in his chest and the blood-pounding sound in his ears. Hopefully that wasn't because of the skirt he was holding.

 _You can do this. You can do this . . . ._

He half expected the rear exit from this section to be even more guarded than the front exit had been. That's how he would have done it if _he_ was a criminal mastermind. But to their relief, he and Mandy saw that it was not. Maybe the two men they'd taken down back in the hallway were responsible for the rear-guard job. Maybe the bad guys were overconfident in their ability to stop anyone from getting away. They thought they were facing nothing worse down here than a fragile, sick woman, a nurse and a panicky, skinny adolescent after all.

Hardly daring to believe their good fortune, he and Mandy visual-checked the area and then made a dash for the unguarded back door. Mandy signaled that she was going out first to make sure the coast was clear on the other side, with Jimmy to follow. She went through the back door to exit the building with nothing and no one blocking her way. Jimmy only kept a few steps behind her. But there – ahead of them he could see the horse cart with their belongings, Baccarat and Diamond still in harness, still under the watch of one of the Federal Building's security guards. They were out! And they could enlist the guard's help too.

Without hesitation, Jimmy set for the cart, getting a few steps ahead of Mandy to reach it, ready to hail the security guard. He didn't have to hail him – the security guard was already turning their way. Jimmy heard Mandy do a sharp intake of breath at being startled by something. Then he noticed the guard was pointing his gun at them. He had gotten the drop on them both.

 _Oh, no . . . ._

Still keeping one hand gripping the skirt, Jimmy raised his hands above his head in surrender.

"Let me guess," he murmured. "You're not really a security guard, are you?" _More likely another mobster Mandy recognized, but too late to do anything about it now._

Another armed man dressed in security guard clothing stepped out from behind the Wests' horse cart, also leveling a gun at them. Then that man was joined by another. The rear exit hadn't been double guarded on the outside – it was _triple_ guarded.

"We heard you was bright," the first fake 'security guard' said with a nasty grin on his face. "Time to go upstairs, kid."


	4. Villainy Seeking Victory

"Agent West, are you all right?"

As if he could be! As if any of them were . . . .

"That was really impressive the way you took out six guys all by yourself," the captive Federal Investigation rookie whispered to him as Tem attempted to recover from the beating he'd suffered. He did his best to sit up despite having his hands shackled behind him.

Tem's fighting skills might have been impressive. They hadn't been nearly enough, though, against the mob of ten gangsters that had jumped him when he, Wickersham, and that idiot Flemings had so obligingly run into their trap. He was surprised he wasn't dead, considering the thugs were all armed with pistols and he'd been taking a toll on them. They'd only used those guns to pistol-whip and stun him, before handcuffing him and dumping him next to the members of Wickersham's freshman Investigator class, already taken prisoner. Wickersham had made his own game attempt to lay into their ambushers, but had been brought down by a blow to the head and was still unconscious. Tem heard him groaning and starting to wake up. At least he wasn't dead yet either. Flemings, the big shot State Department man, had been about as useful as a tissue paper pitchfork, shrieking and surrendering without even trying to help his stalwart defenders.

 _What a joke_ , Tem thought, glaring over at where Flemings still cowered on the floor. Their assailants obviously thought so too and hadn't even bothered to tie the man up like they had the rookie Investigators. That would have been handy if Flemings was just putting on an act to fool them as Uncle Arte would have done, but it was clear that he wasn't. Flemings was every bit as cringing and cooperative in the face of danger as he appeared to be. And this yellow-bellied lump of lack-spine had dared to insult Tem's brave, tough, smart-as-a-whip wife?

Unfortunately, that wonderful wife was far too vulnerable right now. As soon as Tem had seen the dilated pupils in her eyes, he'd guessed what her problem might be. She wasn't sick – she'd been drugged or poisoned, probably by something up in the attic or some relic she and Jimmy had brought down from it. It wouldn't have taken much – a prick from the tip of a dart, a small scratch from a tainted object, breathing in the wrong cloud of dust . . . . God only knew what might be up there or how dangerous that stuff was. He only prayed that whatever she'd been exposed to, the effects were only temporary and that she'd recover. But she might not have the chance. The bound rookie seated on the floor next to him had informed Tem of the men sent down to first floor to seal the exits and round up the section's remaining occupants. Of course, Flemings the sniveler had told them all about the infirmary and the three people in it. So help Tem, if they harmed one hair on Amanda's or Jimmy's head . . . .

"Awake, I see," a voice Tem wished he didn't recognize said. "Good."

'Presidio Pete' Yerba had sworn he would get revenge on the Wests one day, and it looked like he was about to get his chance.

"Hello, Pete," Tem growled, glowering up at him.

The San Francisco mob boss stepped up and fetched Tem a ringing slap across the face. Tem returned the favor by using his legs, with speed that the mobster wasn't prepared for, to scissor themselves around Yerba's, yank his own legs out from under him and dump Yerba on the floor. Immediately, Yerba's crew aimed their own guns, but Tem had already figured out they were under orders not to kill him for some reason. What he hadn't figured on was one of the more astute gangsters placing his gun barrel not up against Tem's head, but against the Federal Investigation rookie next to him. Faced with the unspoken threat to a fellow lawman, Tem yielded and withdrew his legs from where he'd been trying to scissor them around Yerba's throat next. Yerba, winded and furious as he stood back up, slapped Tem again and this time Tem made no attempt to retaliate.

"I, uh, take it you two know each other?" the Investigation rookie gulped as the gun to his head was withdrawn.

"You might say that," Tem muttered. "Yerba's wanted on charges of racketeering, extortion, bribery, blackmail, smuggling – and the murder of three Secret Service agents." Tem couldn't blame the rookie for turning a shade paler. He looked even younger than Tem and didn't need to be told that any man who would slay three of Washington's finest would kill their entire group of raw recruits without a second's hesitation.

"You caused me a lotta trouble, West," Yerba snarled. "You and your little lady. Twenty guys you cost me, over a million bucks and five more years of sweet deals. I owe you for that."

 _And we'd have caught you too if not for that damn earthquake!_ Tem thought fiercely, but did not say it aloud.

Yerba's mouth went from snarling at him to exposing a nasty, yellow-toothed grin.

"But you and your doll are gonna make it up to me. You're gonna be real good to me from now on."

If the situation hadn't been so serious, Tem would have laughed at the mobster's presumption.

"We'll never work for you."

But the mobster only grinned wider and pointed over to where one of his thugs was holding a large, sealed beaker filled with a glowing yellow-green liquid.

"Who says I'm gonna give you a choice?" Yerba gloated. "Once my labbies turn that stuff into head-rocks, you and her are gonna do anything I want, an' all I gotta do is whistle."

"But . . . but you can't!" A protest came from a direction Tem wouldn't have expected – Flemings, the State Department man. "I-if you misappropriate that chemical, the government of France will . . . ." Flemings brief attempt at something vaguely resembling bravery ended as 'Presidio Pete' turned toward him and began moving in the objector's direction. The California kingpin did not appreciate the interruption. He grabbed the terrified Flemings by the shirt and yanked him up from where he'd been crouched to yell right into Flemings' face.

"The government of France is on the other side of the ocean, numbskull! I ain't! Who d'you think's gonna stop me, huh? West here?"

 _I'm sure going to try_ , Tem vowed.

Flemings was turning positively gray with fear and for good reason. Yerba released his grip on the shirt, causing his victim to fall back on the floor in a heap. But he wasn't done yet. Yerba held out his hand, palm up, to one of his men. The obedient goon put his own revolver in his boss' hand. Tem knew what was coming next if he couldn't somehow find a way to stop it. Flemings knew too.

"No . . . no . . . . Please!" Flemings begged.

Tem cleared his throat as loud as he could to get the mobster's attention.

"Yeah, you're a real big man, aren't you?" Tem said. "Threatening a small fry like him! Afraid to look me in the eyes?" Tem's bravado had the effect he hoped. Instead of shooting Flemings, Yerba turned back to his original target. He pulled back on the revolver and aimed the barrel right at Tem's forehead. The son of James West didn't flinch. He stared straight at Yerba as only the son of James West could stare, a look that could freeze someone with a survival instinct, a look that _dared_ Yerba to shoot.

 _You think I wouldn't prefer that to being your mindless slave? You think you can impress me with how tough you are?_

Artemus West hadn't blinked when his father's killer had tried to stare him down with Tem shackled over his alligator pit. He sure as hell wasn't going to blink now. But Yerba did.

"Nice try, West," the lead gangster muttered, turning away first and handing the gun back to his minion. "You ain't getting out of this that easy!"

Tem kept staring and noticed with some satisfaction that Yerba was no longer trying to meet his eyes.

 _That's right, killer. Be afraid._

Tem had not forgotten about the three fellow agents killed, or his determination to bring their murderer to justice. How ironic that Yerba had escaped them in San Francisco only to arrive voluntarily at one of the buildings where the Federal government meted out justice. Yerba would bitterly regret that mistake if only Tem could find a way to free himself and the other captives. That glowing greenish liquid still looked a long way off from being turned into the complex crystals that could be implanted in anyone's brain. Nor did Tem see 'Presidio Pete' as the sort of mad genius who would be able to get very far with running any large zombie slave operation. He was clever, yes, and dangerous, as the murder of three agents had proved. But he was also _too_ violent, too careless, and now much, much too Wanted. Titus Trask's revenge fantasies had never been much more than an absurd pipe dream. In the end, Tem's father and Uncle Arte had defeated him using nothing other than play-acting and a couple bottles of sleep gas components. The more complex and ambitious the plot, the easier it was to throw a wrench in the works. Yerba might be highly competent in his preferred fields – extortion, smuggling, and murder – but he was no Count Manzeppi.

He _might_ have just enough of a pinch of ego-obsessed Dr. Loveless in him though . . . . Time to do a bit of digging.

"So that's your grand plan?" Tem scoffed. "Come all this way to Chicago so you can steal a bottle of chemicals just to get your revenge on me and make me polish your shoes for you?"

 _Come on, Mr. Big Shot – start boasting your guts out and tell me what all your plans are so I know where to stick that wrench!_

Once again, Tem had judged the mobster accurately.

"Polish my shoes?" The gangster cracked another one of his nasty yellow grins. "Naw – though that ain't a bad idea. I could have some fun making you do a whole lotta things like that. But that ain't enough, West. You cost me big. Having you under my thumb's gonna pay off real big." Yerba started laughing. "You're a great big bonus – that's what you are! Funny thing is, I was only makin' plans for these guys." He waved his hand around at the captive law enforcement rookies and Wickersham, who had now awakened and was listening just as attentively as Tem. "It wasn't bad enough the lousy Treasury Department saddled enterprisin' gentlemen like myself with the likes of you! Now your Mr. Bonaparte and his man Finch think they're gonna hit us with this whole new Bureau of Investigation?" Yerba shook his head. "I don't think so! Not for long, anyway."

Some of Yerba's men snickered along with their boss at the small group of individuals held captive at their feet, fledgling law enforcement agents with their hands bound behind their backs. Tem was pleased to see that the State Department's Flemings was the only man visibly quivering with fear among them. Even the rookie seated next to Tem who'd had a gun put to his head was now doing his best to keep a stoic and brave expression.

"If you think you can stop the Bureau by massacring us, you're wrong," Wickersham said, giving Yerba his own version of a glare. "There will b-" His words were cut off as Yerba slapped him across the face hard enough to knock him over. Another Investigator rookie tried to lunge forward to defend Wickersham, only to be knocked out by a blow to the head from a gangster's pistol-butt.

"What d'you think I am, stupid?" Yerba yelled at Wickersham. "You think I don't know killin' a couple of you jokers ain't gonna be enough?" With effort, Yerba reined in his temper enough to return to his gloating. "Don't think I'm just makin' you martyrs! I got a much better idea than that!" Again, Yerba pointed to the flask of glowing liquid. "I'm gonna be doin' to you just what I'm doin' to West here. I'll fill your heads all fulla them little Franconium pyrite rocks my labbies are gonna whip up for me. Then I'll be makin' sure you obey my orders instead'a Boney and Finch. And oh, them orders are gonna make sure everyone in this country starts clamorin' for your new Bureau to be stomped out once and for all!" Yerba leered at his prisoners and made a bye-bye gesture with his hand. "People are gonna be thinking I'm a saint compared to what I have you Investigators do!"

"You'll never get away with this!" Wickersham glared up at him.

 _I couldn't have said it better myself_ , Tem thought. No – 'Presidio' wasn't in the same league as villains who might have been up for carrying out such a scheme, and he was too ambitious to have figured that out yet. Tem had to hand it to the man for getting this far, and for coming up with a plot against the new Bureau of Investigation which, in the hands of a more subtle mastermind, could work. Tem inwardly shuddered to think what someone like the Man in the Red Hat could accomplish if _he_ got his hands on the Franconium hydrate and this crew of captive Federal agents. Thankfully that wasn't the case. Yerba and his gang might have succeeded in getting into the Federal Building without discovery – probably last night, Tem guessed – and in staying hidden to ambush them all today. But getting back out with not just the chemical but with over a dozen hostages was another matter. In boasting of his plans, Yerba had just made his biggest mistake. These weren't any ordinary hostages. They might still be green, but the Federal Investigators were lawmen through and through. _These men were hand-picked for a reason, Yerba, and now you've given them another reason – to fight you all the way up to death by any means necessary_. The means weren't presenting themselves yet, but they would. Tem was a firm believer in his father's philosophy: never give up.

Tem was glad his father had ingrained that philosophy so deep in him. If anything could have driven him into despair, it was what happened next. The door of the room they were being held in opened and Amanda and Jimmy were nudged in at gunpoint by three gangster 'security guards.' Amanda had picked up a new suit, presumably from one of Yerba's goons by the look of it. Tem was relieved to see she was walking upright and appeared steadier and more alert. Jimmy was holding Amanda's skirt in one of his upraised hands for some reason, very pale but trying so hard to be brave, like the rookie seated next to Tem. Tem's heart ached at seeing them both captured, knowing that they were faced with the same ghastly peril he was in because he had brought them here.

'Presidio Pete' Yerba was in his full gloating glory now, with another of the agents he so desired vengeance upon in his grasp, along with the young man who was dear to her and Tem both.

"Well ain't this something, West?" the mob leader laughed. "Looks like I got a family reunion going here! Ain't that peachy keen!" Yerba looked the new arrivals over, paying special attention to Amanda. "An' here's the witch with the white umbrella! Where'd you leave it, sweet cheeks?"

Amanda's response was stony silence and a glare that was in its own way every bit as threatening as Tem's. That and her outfit only seemed to amuse Yerba, however.

"Them clothes look better on Joey, baby doll," Yerba snickered. "Mebbe we should take 'em off you instead."

Tem had never wanted to punch anyone in his life quite as badly as he wanted to punch Yerba right then. He wasn't sure he could actually kill a man with one punch, but he so wanted to find out . . . .

And Yerba's men were just as eager as their boss to get a closer inspection of the female elite Secret Service agent – a _much_ closer inspection. Tem tensed his legs, ready to spring from the floor and fly at Yerba and any other man who so much as touched her. Hands cuffed behind him or not, he'd risk . . . .

But Amanda saw the subtle movement of Tem's leg muscles that no one else had noticed, and just as subtly sent a hand and eye signal of her own that Tem well understood.

 _Wait._

As it turned out, Yerba was willing to do the same, at least long enough to hear what one of his phony 'security guards' had to say.

"Nurse's out like a light, boss. Joey, Dugan and Howie too. But we di'nt see no fancy umbrellas on her like you warned us about. All she had was this." The guard handed over a pistol.

"Nothin' on the kid?" Yerba eyed Jimmy suspiciously. "He got nothin' in that cloth he's holdin'?"

"Nah," Yerba's man told him. "We made him show us. Just holding onto his sister's duds for her." The man snickered and Tem saw Jimmy blush beet red. "But we got something better for you! These guys had a wagon piled full of stuff – boxes and boxes of it!"

"Yeah?" Yerba's eyes lit up and he practically licked his lips with greed. He also turned to leer at each of his Secret Service prisoners. "My day just keeps gettin' better and better, West! How nice a'you to bring me presents like that!" He snapped his fingers at two of the men holding guns on Tem, Flemings and the Investigators and gestured with a thumb toward the 'security guards.' "Sam, Lou – go with these guys and bring me up anything that looks interesting! We got a while to wait 'til nightfall an' get out of here," he grinned at Tem. "So let's see what's in them boxes and have us a nice surprise!"


	5. Creeps and Peeps

_Sweet cheeks?_

Amanda wished with all her heart that she did have her white parasol on her right now, or almost any of her other 'working parasols.' She'd suspected who might be the boss of the criminal operation going on in the Federal Building as soon as she'd recognized Joey Rock-fingers. She, like Tem, longed to bring in 'Presidio Pete' Yerba ever since the killer had managed to elude them in San Francisco. But now she was the one at Yerba's non-existent mercy along with her loved ones, and she not only didn't have any of her favorite weapons to hand, she didn't even have her usual strength or energy. She had recovered from her exposure to the spilled chemical on her skirt for the most part consciousness-wise, but still didn't feel up to her usual level of physical ability. She also wasn't finding it easy to control the swirl of emotions threatening her from within. _Need to focus, need to focus . . . ._

What did she have to bring to this fight? She and Jimmy had the knives they'd taken off of Yerba's unconscious goons. They still had the skirt and its dangerous residue. There were distinct advantages to being underestimated sometimes – it was easy to conceal contraband like the knives during a search using their father's old sleight-of-hand trickery and none of the gang suspected that the skirt contained anything more than her cast-off petticoat. Two knives and the most knockout piece of women's wear in creation weren't enough to take out a well-armed, well-organized gang that had already gotten the drop on all of them though. There had to be _something_ they could do, something they could use.

"Uh, can I . . . can I sit down too please?" Jimmy asked with a frightened quaver in his voice, looking toward the Investigators seated on the floor.

Yerba nodded and his gunsels gestured for Jimmy to join the Investigators. Jimmy scrambled to sit down next to a couple of captives near the back.

"Thanks," Jimmy murmured to the mob. "As my Great, Great Aunt Maude always said-"

"Shaddup, kid," Yerba growled.

Jimmy obediently shut up, but he didn't need to finish the sentence for Tem and Amanda to get a hidden meaning from it. He had figured out something he could do at least, even if they hadn't. Amanda tilted her head forward ever so slightly to acknowledge it – message received. So, she saw out of the corner of her eye, did Tem. The real Great, Great Aunt Maude would have been amused to know she still had a name to conjure with half a century after her death, Amanda thought. Their father had taken to using that name with a purpose. Amanda just hoped her younger brother knew what he was doing, whatever it was. He might be the smartest one of the trio for all his youth, and he'd been resourceful beyond all expectations in Murfreesboro a few months ago. He'd also come darn close to getting himself killed for that ingenuity.

She needed to figure out what she could do herself. It didn't take any particular genius to know that Yerba would focus more on her actions than on Jimmy's, whatever she did. She also needed more information if she could get it. Without bothering to ask permission first, she folded her legs in their masculine pants and sat down cross-legged next to her husband, staring defiance at Yerba all the way. She could spring up from this position much faster than most people, and she needed to confer with Tem if possible. Yerba made a snarling gesture at her but did nothing else, since at that moment he was distracted by the arrival of some of the Wests' own possessions from below. Greedy as ever, the gangster turned his attention to these new acquisitions, trusting that his armed guards could handle the prisoners for him.

"You're looking better," Tem commented quietly.

"A change of outfit can do a girl wonders," she answered back. She dared say nothing more about her condition while they might yet hope to use the skirt and its chemical cargo as a weapon. Jimmy still had possession of it and had set it down carefully beside himself. None of the gang had taken any special notice of it beyond their initial snickers at Jimmy.

In hushed tones and with surprisingly little objection from their captors, Tem and Wickersham filled Amanda in on Yerba's plans for the Franconium hydrate – and for them. It was an ambitious and blood-curdling plot all right – one that must not be allowed to succeed, whatever the cost. And Yerba might not give a damn about Franco-American diplomacy, but Amanda understood more than a little about the importance of foreign relations, just as her father had. Right now with political tensions rising in Europe, especially in France, that might be the most important consideration of them all.

Amanda might have had trouble wrestling her fears and concerns into their accustomed corral today, but the sight of Yerba and his goons manhandling the family's private possessions was enough to put a quiet, determined fury in charge of the herd.

"What's this do?" the San Francisco mob leader asked her, handing her grandmother's china teapot off to one of his gang for inspection. Yerba had experienced the touch of Amanda's electricity-charged white silk parasol once before and had sense – or cowardice – enough not to risk poking into Amanda's other belongings too closely himself.

"It's my grandmother's teapot," Amanda answered laconically. "It's used to make tea."

The gangster handling the tea pot, peering inside it and looking down its spout smirked and with one quick tossing motion smashed the fragile object to pieces on the floor. Amanda wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of hearing her gasp or seeing her flinch in reaction.

"That was genuine _Spode_ ," she said coolly with narrowed eyes.

She did get some satisfaction from Yerba's reaction as he wiped the smug, ain't-that-a-shame smirk off the minion's face with a swift blow to the head.

"Idjit!" Yerba yelled at the man. "That could'a been worth something!" Then he turned to the rest of the crew pawing through or bringing up boxes from the Wests' cartload. "Don't nobody destroy nothing else without my say so! You got it?"

They got it.

While Yerba and his gang were distracted with that, Amanda looked around to see whatever she could see, and try to figure out what Jimmy was up to. It didn't take her long, and when she did, she felt almost embarrassed that she hadn't thought of it herself. Tem's hands were fastened behind his back by steel handcuffs, but the Federal Investigators had been tied with ordinary rope. Amanda had been trained by her parents to spot an acting job when she saw it. Three of the Investigators sitting closest to Jimmy were now only pretending to have their hands still tied behind them. A fourth Investigator was trying just a little too hard to act inconspicuous while she noticed the slight but steady movement of the arm muscles under his shirt. The knife Jimmy had kept concealed on his person was making the rounds. A knife blade wouldn't solve Tem's dilemma, but at least some of their law enforcement colleagues were no longer as helpless as the gang thought. Amanda considered sending the knife she'd kept on her to perform the same function, but Yerba's sentries were paying closer attention to her and Tem than to her gawky teenage brother and the other captives.

"Hey, you!" Yerba called over to Amanda again. "What's this do?" He held up an object Amanda couldn't blame him for not recognizing this time, it being one of her father's less successful inventions.

"It's an electric waffle iron," she sighed. "It makes waffles, sometimes." _And could make Lily Gordon irritated even more often_ , she remembered, though her mother was in a far better place than any smoke-filled kitchen these days.

"What'cha having some kind of kitchen sale?" Yerba complained, disappointed by his meagre and mediocre haul.

"We've been packing up our parents' belongings," Amanda said, doing her very best to keep her tone and temper under control. "They died a few months ago."

"Yeah, I heard about ol' West." The mobster started chuckling. "I heard it was a real blast!"

If looks could have killed, the hostile glares Tem, Amanda and Jimmy all gave him in that moment would have cremated Yerba on the spot. But it helped Amanda to summon the calculating, dangerous calm she needed so much right now. Yerba would regret that. Amanda put away all her fear and frustration and became the force of iron determination, with a much sharper focus. She began thinking much more clearly and quicker though outwardly nothing about her appearance changed.

"Hey boss, look at these," one of Yerba's gangsters said as he and a co-thug carried in two boxes labeled T. M. of Steel lamp 1 and T. M. of Steel lamp 2.

Tem flashed Amanda a wary glance at the sight of those boxes, but Amanda didn't return his concern. She was counting up the number of Yerba's men, going over in her head what she already knew about them, and forming a plan. A strange plan, perhaps, but the best one she could think of, and the contents of those boxes were nothing if not strange.

"T. M. of Steel lamp," Yerba muttered, reading aloud and then looking back at Tem and Amanda for answers. "What's 'at supposed to mean?"

Tem appeared flustered and furious as she knew he would. In full actress mode, she adopted an expression of awkward humiliation mixed with indignation, causing her face to blush again as she gave Tem a sharp nudge that was one of their signals to let her take the lead.

"You _would_ have chosen to bring that along!" she scolded her husband. "You and Jimmy! Or I suppose you were going to claim it was all Jimmy's idea!" In the back, Jimmy seemed plenty flustered too, but he knew his sister's acting abilities and had more than a few of his own. Amanda's sudden, quarrelsome reaction told Yerba nothing of what he wanted to know, but made him even more curious about the contents of those boxes, as well as cautious.

"I _said_ , Lady," Yerba growled, "what's in it!"

Amanda pulled her sitting position up straighter and made herself the very picture of offended matronly sensibilities.

"If you _must_ know," she sniffed, "it's one of those old winding peep shows. Something our fathers apparently used at one time."

"Peep shows?" Yerba asked, eyebrows raised. If there was one term that could get him and every one of his men suddenly interested, this was it.

"You know," she frowned, fidgeting and trying to make herself blush even hotter. "One of those old-fashioned naughty stereopticons, with the pictures of dance hall girls dancing around in their . . . ." she hesitated. "Their . . . very little. And then taking that off. A bawdy peep show." She paused again and snuffled with disgust. "It's designed to look like a lamp so men could hide what it was from their wives or girlfriends, but my mother figured it out. I don't know _why_ she ever let my father or Uncle Jim keep the thing! They probably bought it when they were bachelors." Now she had every single one of the San Francisco gang present hanging on her every outraged word. Possibly all of the Federal Investigators too. She took the calculated risk of staring back at her brother to add to her authenticity by scolding him too. "And I know Mom caught you using it once, Jimmy!"

Jimmy clamped his mouth shut with very authentic-looking resentment and managed a pretty impressive blush on his cheeks too. Amanda hadn't thought he knew that trick yet, but maybe it came naturally to teenage boys.

"A peep show, eh?" Yerba was fascinated. He and the minions who'd brought in the two boxes opened them with great care and lifted out exactly what Amanda knew they would find. There once again was the old lamp base with its reservoir, wick, chimney and lamp stand, and in Yerba's hands the ornate, gaudy, stained-glass shade with its non-fastening finial. Amanda continued to frown with disapproval and Tem and Jimmy gave no sign of the menace the lamp represented as Yerba and his men set down the lamp base with something akin to reverence on a desk near the center of the room and remounted the old stained-glass shade. They examined it all over with great curiosity hoping to find where the photograph reel of naked saloon girls was kept, but saw only an ordinary lamp – of exactly the right kind for a man's wife to find in his den. Once more Yerba turned to Amanda for information. "How's it work?"

Amanda had to look to Jimmy for some help with this, since she hadn't really seen it hypnotize Tem, though she could guess what the first part of the procedure was.

"First you have to light it, I believe . . . ." she said. "And then you have to . . . spin the shade around very, very fast?"

Jimmy nodded confirmation.

"And then you look directly into the light and you can start to see the images of the dancing girls . . . well, you know . . . ." she added.

Yerba listened attentively, but not without at least a little skepticism.

"An' why's it labeled T. M. of Steel?" he asked, sounding suspicious.

Amanda thought up the most vulgar explanation she could give and gave it, lowering her eyes and sounding even more mortified.

"I believe our mother said it stood for To Men of Steel," she whispered, "because I suppose the idea is to make men . . . ." She gestured down to the front area of the men's pants she was wearing but fell silent and refused to say more.

Tem cleared his throat loudly as if to spare his wife further embarrassment. Yerba's gang looked around at one another and began to snicker at what she appeared to be referring to. Yes, they were buying the whole story. Eager to test it out for themselves, they scurried as Yerba ordered them to scrounge up some lamp oil and matches to make the antique 'naughty stereopticon' work once more. And oh, how Amanda wanted to make that lamp work . . . .

"You, uh, should probably have a bucket of water on hand too," Jimmy piped up nervously. "In case it sparks a bit when it's spinning. Kind of old and dusty . . . ." The lamp was that as well. Yerba considered it and ordered the prudent fire bucket also.

 _Clever_ , Amanda thought, given what she and her brother had both predicted about the clump of old sleep gas chemical congealed on her skirt should they need to fully activate it by immersing it in water. If it worked, that one-shot deal would be just the pièce de résistance they needed with this crew.

In no time at all, Yerba's crew had found lamp oil, gotten out matches and had the water-bearing fire bucket. Under their boss' close supervision, they filled the old lamp's reservoir, lit it, made sure the stained-glass shade was fitted in place properly and ready to spin. Amanda had assured them – disapprovingly of course – that the images of the women would be seen readily enough once the lamp was lit and they looked into it as the shade spun. Since there appeared to be no clear 'front' or 'back' to the lamp, they all figured the images could be viewed from any angle and were eager to crowd around the lamp and see for themselves.

But Yerba still remembered the Wests from their San Francisco encounter better than she would have liked just then in spite of her convincing act. His men might be gullible enough and anxious to see an 1870s obscene 'magic lantern' stereopticon show, but Yerba held them back and eyed Amanda – and also the lamp – suspiciously again.

"Uh-uh, doll face," he shook his head. "Not so fast. This ain't gonna be us fallin' for one of your sneaky tricks. We'll see what the truth is. I think I know a real good test subject to try out this little gadget on first." Yerba bared his rows of dirty yellow teeth and then grinned, pointing at Tem. "Before we go lookin' into it, I'm thinkin' we ought to try it out on you, West."

At Yerba's command, a glowering Tem was hauled up between two of Yerba's more muscular goons, forced to stand directly in front of the old lamp and ordered, with a gun to his head, to stare into the light peeking through the stained-glass shade. Leaving nothing to chance, Yerba held another gun aimed at Amanda and ordered her to be the one to spin the shade in case it was booby-trapped. Amanda hadn't counted on this. With solemn expression, she stared across the lamp at her handsome, tough husband.

 _You wanted to take a second crack at this, my love. I hope you were right, because you're about to get your chance . . . ._


	6. Seeing the Light

_Be careful what you wish for._

How many times had he heard people, especially family, tell him that? Jimmy couldn't remember. But that old, old piece of advice was coming back to haunt him now as he held his breath in anticipation of what was about to happen next. Jimmy had a pretty good idea of what Mandy's plan was, and he had to hand it to his big sister for quick and creative thinking. She wasn't just a female grizzly in human form. She practically qualified as an evil genius minus most of the evil part. But the guy who was in charge here, and who was obviously the evil criminal type, might just have wrecked their plans. Jimmy sure hoped Tem could play along with Mandy's scheme and resist the hypno-lamp's power on a second try, because all their lives were depending on it. If Tem let that spinning lamp shade turn him into a vacant-eyed trance victim again and confirmed the lead mobster's worst suspicions, they might be doomed.

But . . . but Artemus West was Uncle Jim's son, and that meant he could do just about anything, right?

Jimmy had grown up believing that, and he wanted very much to believe it right now. The lamp had gotten lucky the first time, that was all. Tem knew what it was now and he wouldn't be lulled by it again, whereas the gangsters . . . .

Jimmy was forced to exhale as his sister set her hand on the lampshade and got it spinning. This time the lamp was lit from within, not reflecting sunlight showing through it, and that almost seemed to give it a different quality. Around and around the shade went, winking a deceptively warm and innocent light that Tem was being forced to stare straight into, while Mandy remained silent, careful to say nothing that might give the criminals a clue of what she was planning to do when _they_ looked into it. Such a beautiful lamp . . . .

 _Whoops!_

Jimmy had to force himself not to watch the spinning shade and its light show too closely himself – and nudge and shake his head at the Federal Investigators as a way of silently advising them not to fall into the trap either. Fortunately, Yerba's men took no notice of anything Jimmy or the Investigators were doing right now. The lamp had them fascinated, if not hypnotized yet, for sure. All their eyes were on the flashing, winking spectacle taking place right in front of them. In spite of their boss' warning, several of the gang members, as far back as they stood, were craning their necks to see if they could get a glimpse of dancing, buxom beauties baring their all. Their leader's eyes, and Mandy's, were on Tem while _he_ watched the winking lamp directly at its full force. To Jimmy's relief, Tem didn't appear to be staring vacantly or dropping his jaw or drooling or anything. Instead, his mouth first and then his other features began to twitch a little and he peered in even closer to get a better look at what he was staring at. Then, all of a sudden, he drew himself back with a horrified grimace of disapproval that mirrored Mandy's, shook his head sadly, blinked and shrugged, as if embarrassed.

"Well, it's not as if our fathers were saints, after all," he sighed. "And they did like pretty gir- uh, women," Tem said with a forlorn wince at his wife. "Er, _lots_ of women."

"And I suppose _Jimmy_ was the one who brought it?" Jimmy's sister demanded. Jimmy had no trouble wincing a bit himself. Her tone of voice could freeze lava.

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Tem protested. If his hands hadn't been cuffed behind him, he'd probably have held them out in front of himself while pleading innocent.

Mandy used the flat of her hand to stop the lamp shade from spinning, bringing the light show to an abrupt halt, to the disappointed murmuring of the gangsters who'd tried to get a better look. Jimmy recalled listening to a lecture at University by his alienist friend Glen on the power of suggestion. Even without Mandy's voice persuasively telling the gangsters yet what they'd be seeing in the light of the lamp, some of them might have thought they caught a glimpse of the sinful girly show. They were eager for more. And Tem was capable of withstanding hypnosis, all right – just like his father would have been. Jimmy could breathe easier about that much at least.

The head gangster must have been breathing easier too. Tem and Mandy's argument had him convinced that the lamp wasn't a trap after all, but a naughty stereopticon peep show exactly like Mandy said it was.

"What'sa matter, West?" the lead man snickered. "Don'cha like watching pretty girlies dancing in the nude? Or do you only like 'em in men's clothes?" He sneered, giving Jimmy's sister the once over with his eyes once more, then commanding his thugs to shove Tem aside, back with the captive Investigators. Now he gave his gang members permission to watch, waving them forward with his hands. "Gather 'round, boys! We got us a sweet little show to watch!"

Jimmy was astonished. Surely the mobster wasn't so careless, so overconfident that he'd let _all_ his men watch the lamp instead of at least some of them watching the prisoners? Jimmy would never have allowed that sort of thing if _he_ had been an evil villain. But this mobster apparently really was that careless and overconfident. Mandy must have known that about him when she came up with this plan. Then again, what did any of the criminals think they had to fear? They had guns – their captives did not. And they didn't know what the lamp was or what it could do to them. They didn't suspect a thing. None of the gang's members appeared to have any sterner sense of caution or guard duty obligation than their boss, or not much, anyway. They moved in closer, crowding the circular perimeter around the lamp, ogling the stained-glass shade as if it was a dancing girl itself in happy anticipation of the coming attraction.

"Go on, girly," the head mobster chuckled, keeping his gun pointing at Mandy, Jimmy realized. "Make with the spin again and let's see those saloon broads do their thing!"

"But!" Mandy prudishly protested.

"I said do it," the mobster nudged her with the barrel of the gun.

Pretending to be reluctant and frightened, as if this wasn't all going according to her plan, Mandy began spinning the lampshade again, starting the blinking and winking light show once more. Jimmy could see the top of the lampshade going around and around again, but this time he didn't have to worry about being dazzled by the warm, hypnotic light or worry that the Investigators would be either. The armed criminals were blocking the view. As the shade spun faster and faster though, Mandy began to speak in a soft voice.

"You see them now, don't you?" she asked. "Here they come, the happy saloon girls with their feather boas . . . ."

A couple of the gang members jostled one another to get a better view, but Jimmy's friend Glen had been right about the power of suggestion being powerful – maybe almost as powerful as the lamp itself. Some of them, the ones at enough of an angle for Jimmy to see their faces, were starting to grin and leer at the light as they stared into the lamp.

"All of them dancing for your entertainment . . . ." There wasn't anything disapproving about the tone Mandy was using now. It was warm and encouraging. "You can almost hear the music they're dancing to, can't you . . . ?"

"I don't see nothing yet," the lead mobster groused, but not very angrily. Even if he wasn't falling into a trance as quickly as his men, the lamp seemed to be having a tranquilizing effect on him. He was staring into the light with all his attention, paying no heed to how his men were starting to react.

"You have to look at it closely . . . ." Mandy's voice droned on. "So closely . . . . You can't take your eyes off it . . . ."

And as simple as that, from what Jimmy could see, the mobsters were caught in the lamp's spell. They really _couldn't_ take their eyes off of it. One or two of them was drooling with lust at the imagined sight of the moving pictures that the lamp didn't really contain.

"There's the blond one . . . ." Mandy said slowly and soothingly. "And oh, look . . . . They're starting to toss the feather boas aside . . . ."

The lead gangster must have liked blonds. He not only now saw what he thought everyone else was seeing, he gave a slow wolf whistle of appreciation.

"Keep watching . . . ." Mandy told them. "Now they're getting to the good part . . . . Keep watching . . . ."

Mandy herself wasn't looking at the lamp. She was watching the criminals. As they all appeared to be entranced by the old stained-glass relic, she looked over at Tem and Jimmy, and with her free hand signaled for them and the Investigators to take advantage of this situation and move silently around the tableau of their hypnotized jailers to make their way out the door of the room. The Investigators were mystified as to what was happening to the criminals, how Mandy had ensorcelled the gang, but they weren't stupid. Appreciating that any loud noise might break the spell, they stood up as quietly as possible, half of them untied now and helping the other half, while Mandy's soft voice kept up its persuasive instruction.

"You don't want to miss a single second of this . . . ." she told the gang. "They're still dancing, but now they're starting to take off those little straps . . . ."

Jimmy almost wished he could just stand there himself to hear the rest. He was definitely going to have to ask Tem and his sister some more questions about saloon girls when they got back to the train. For right now, he and the others were still in danger, and he, Secret Agent James Ulysses Gordon had a job to do.

Tem, still unable to free his hands, used silent, nodding gestures to instruct the Investigators to escape through the door while they had the chance, and for their leader Mr. Wickersham to pick up the sealed flask of glowing green liquid and take it with them. Drat it, Jimmy would have liked to be the one entrusted with that job, but then who would stay in this room to carry out the all-important task of dunking his sister's skirt into a pail full of water with hopefully dramatic results? Jimmy pantomimed to Tem and the others what he intended to do once they escaped, holding the twisted-up skirt in one hand and pulling his shirt collar up over his mouth and nose and covering them with his free hand. Tem might not have been able to get the full story, but he knew how his Uncle Arte's sleep gas chemicals worked. He got the idea.

The Investigators listened at the doorway, peered out, opened it and carefully slipped out one at a time, taking the flask of Franconium hydrate. The mobsters paid them no attention whatsoever. Visions of dancing girls kept them bespelled, their focus on the lamp and their gun hands lowered, breathing heavy, eyes bugging out, mouths gaping . . . Jimmy saw and looked away fast. If the inventor of the lamp had ever been pulled up from watery depths and put in a proper grave, he'd be spinning in it as fast as the lampshade right now, Jimmy bet. But that old invention was doing its job brilliantly and so was Mandy.

"And now they're starting to . . . ."

Mandy kept up her gentle, seductive descriptions, watching all the while to make sure everyone else was escaping. But Jimmy noticed one person who was not – not a gang member, but the State Department man Mr. Flemings. He, like Jimmy and Mandy, hadn't been tied with ropes and he had been closer to the front of the group than the rest of them. There was enough of a gap in between gangsters near where Mr. Flemings had been standing that he had watched and been entranced by the hypnotic lamplight as well. Nothing to do about it now. As the last of the Federal Investigators made it out, Tem glared at the State man in frustration but had no way to pick him up or shove him out the door. Flemings would just have to experience the joys of Artemus Gordon's chemical wizardry along with the gang members. Tem made it to the threshold and looked over to Mandy and Jimmy. Mandy acknowledged him with a nod. It was her turn to go now, if she could extricate herself from the crowd of mobsters around her. Their leader was no longer pointing his gun at her but had let it droop while he gazed obsessively at a scantily-clad blond saloon girl that existed only in his imagination. Mandy looked around, decided on a route, gave the lampshade one last, firm spin and began weaving her way carefully to the door, keeping up her patter as she did.

Jimmy paid no attention to the remaining words of her command to the gangsters. He was concentrating on his own action. He had to creep closer to the entranced crooks in order to be near enough to the water bucket to toss the chemical-laden skirt in, and he had to do it without snapping any of them out of the lamp's spell. No remarkable athlete, he couldn't afford to risk a distance toss that might miss. With the bucket of water finally within reach and mindful of the location of the doorway, which Tem and Mandy were now watching him through and looking full of concern – gosh, thanks for that confidence booster! – Jimmy took one deep breath, held the skirt out at arm's length as far as he could and then dropped it into the water. Bullseye!

Jimmy almost fell backward and nearly lost his chance to escape as a reddish geyser of sleep smoke burst straight upwards from the pail toward the ceiling. Somehow he kept his balance, made the full turn that he had to and ran like a track and field champion for the door, holding his breath all the way. Mandy and Tem had to duck out of his way he got out of that room so fast. Then they all risked having the door make a noise as Mandy, holding her breath too, slammed it shut. The three Secret Service agents, not daring to inhale yet, dashed to where the Federal Investigators were waiting. Jimmy was glad to see there were no more armed gangsters waiting to ambush them – they must all have been in that room or still downstairs. Their small group of law enforcers weren't out of the woods yet, but there was definitely light poking through those trees.

The Investigators looked puzzled at everything that had just happened. Well, they had a right to be puzzled after all. But they remained silent, still seeking to communicate through gestures rather than make any noise. Then they, and Jimmy, Mandy and Tem heard through the wall of the hallway a sound that was sweet music to Jimmy's ears: the thump, thump, thump of unconscious gangster bodies hitting the floor. Lots of them. Jimmy had been afraid, while Mandy was using the lamp on them, that one or more of the gangsters might have caught on and resisted the lamp's effect just as Tem had. But no one shut in that room would have escaped the effects of such a big cloud of sleep gas.

"That takes care of Yerba and his gang up here," Tem whispered to Wickersham and the others. "No telling how many more are downstairs, but if we wait several minutes, it should be safe for us to go back in there. We'll be able to take their guns and turn the tables." Artemus Gordon's sleep gas formulas were powerful, and this one must have constituted a triple dose, but once fully converted into gas form by liquid activation, they all neutralized themselves within minutes. "And we still need to get _that_ ," Tem nodded toward the glowing green flask in Wickersham's hands, "to safety before anything else happens to it."

Mr. Wickersham looked like he'd been asked to carry a bomb, Jimmy thought. But better in his hands than in the gangsters' ownership. And maybe now that Jimmy was done with his difficult, heroic role of . . . well, of using a weapon that Oscar Montague was NOT going to hear about _ever_ , Jimmy could even more heroically offer to shoulder the burden for Mr. Wickersham by-

"No, Jimmy," Mandy said firmly.

Drat it! How did she _do_ that?

"Um, think you could get these things off me?" Tem whispered to Jimmy, turning around and holding out his arms from his back as far as he could. Before Jimmy could reply, one of the Investigators had already stepped forward to do the job with a small lockpick he'd apparently had on his person, unlike Jimmy, who didn't even seem to have brought his trusty screwdriver with him today. Awkward. Imagine a seasoned, _travelled_ , mature Secret Service agent like him being beaten to the punch by a rookie! "Thanks!" Tem sighed with relief and rubbed his freed wrists. "Jimmy, how long do you think we have to wait for that smoke to dissipate?"

"Not sure," Jimmy admitted. "It wasn't exactly a measured dose like usual. Maybe five minutes?"

Given the uncertain strength of that chemical cloud, they decided to wait a full seven minutes, while posting a lookout for any more gang members coming up from below. Those minutes took an eternity ticking by. Someday Jimmy might look back and laugh at his memories, he thought, but it wouldn't include memories of today.

At last enough time had passed that they decided to take the risk. One of the rookie Investigators insisted on volunteering to go in first. He opened the door warily, went in amidst the spectacle of one State Department official and a dozen gangsters all fallen deeply unconscious in a bizarre circular pattern around an old, bright oil lamp whose stained glass shade had stopped spinning. The room smelled a bit off, and its ceiling now had a rust-colored stain where the sleep gas had shot up like a fountain out of the water bucket, but that was all. Their volunteer stood there for a minute and then declared the coast clear. Tem and the Investigators swept into the room and took control of the gangsters' weapons, while Jimmy, Mandy and their assigned Investigator lookout stayed outside guarding Wickersham and the precious glowing flask of Franconium hydrate. The leader of the Investigators seemed stunned by the strange turn after turn the events of the day had taken.

"Are, ah, all of the incidents the Secret Service deals with like this one?" Wickersham asked.

Jimmy shook his head.

"Tem decided we ought to take it _easy_ today," he said.

Mandy scolded Jimmy not to try getting away with making Wickersham lose his grip on the flask, but he noticed she was smiling just a little as she did.

The next hour passed in a bit of a busy blur for Secret Service Agent James Ulysses Gordon. There was the spectacle of Tem hauling the unconscious gangster chief out of the room wearing the same pair of handcuffs that the gang had used on Tem. Mandy definitely smiled at _that_. Jimmy didn't witness the gun battle that took place downstairs as his brother-in-law and the team of Investigators he took with him dealt with the pair of gangster-guards blocking access to the front of the Federal Building, and another one at the rear entrance, but he could tell from the sounds it was over quick. After that followed the incredible confusion and crowd of policemen and _real_ security guards that swept in from the Court sections, the noise and consternation as the surviving criminals were hauled away to jail. With Mr. Wickersham and reinforcements now escorting the Franconium hydrate to a more secured section of the building where it could be kept locked up under legitimate armed guard, Jimmy and his sister had another urgent task to do. They made sure the T. M. of Steel 1 and T. M. of Steel 2 boxes were very carefully repacked, and with the help of some of the rescued Investigators, loaded along with the Wests' other possessions back onto the horse cart, safe from any more prying eyes.

"The lamp stays?" Jimmy dared to whisper hopefully.

"The lamp stays," Mandy sighed. "For now."

Jimmy didn't have to ask what the 'for now' meant. After seeing what that old lamp could do to an entire group of people all at once, he'd never be tempted to think of it as a plaything or casual experiment.

By the time Tem and the Investigators finished wrapping up preliminary explanations for other officials in the Federal Building and rejoined them by the horse cart, Baccarat and Diamond were stamping their hooves with impatience and Jimmy almost wished he could do likewise. What a day. He was exhausted. They were all exhausted. Again! Heck, they could have almost _died_. He'd even thought his sister _was_ dying. Thank heavens he'd been wrong about that! By the time they got this load of stuff back to the Wanderer II and stowed away, they might as well spend the night sleeping back on board the train. Tem and Mandy apparently thought so too. No going out on the town after all this – Tem had brought yet another box back to the cart with him. Provisions for the weary, hungry conquering heroes, he explained, obligingly fetched for them by one of the Court clerk-assistants.

"We can wait to eat most of it back on the train," Tem grinned, reaching into the box and pulling out a cardboard carton. "But we'd better hurry up and devour the ice cream here before it melts."

Ice cream!

Jimmy felt a sudden, renewed burst of energy at the sound of the magic words and dived for that carton so fast he almost startled the horses. Although they each took a portion, Tem and Mandy seemed perfectly willing to leave the lions' share of the pre-dinner dessert to Jimmy. Well, that made sense – he was a growing b-, uh, man, almost.

"Not exactly dinner at the Au Boeuf Bistro," Tem sighed to Mandy. "But I'm glad you're feeling better. I'll still be all ears to get the full story about that."

Jimmy felt his built-in mushy stuff detector going off and made it his business to concentrate on the ice cream as his sister and brother-in-law started wrapping each other in a hug, which looked extra-weird given the men's suit Mandy was still wearing.

"We can always go out to dinner tomorrow night," she said. "Would that be all right?"

"Fine by me, Mrs. West," Tem answered. "If, uh, you don't mind being seen in public with the weaker sex, that is?"

 _Oh, brother . . . ._

"Mr. West," Mandy laughed, "I think I shall manage . . . ."


	7. Picnic Wrap

"I can't tell you how much we appreciate this," Tem said, looking out over the vast green expanse of the Gordon home's front lawn. Refreshments were being enjoyed plein air by the considerable number of people who'd helped with Jeremy and Kate Pike's big move.

"How much _you_ appreciate it?" Federal Agent Stan Wickersham laughed. "The way I see it, it's the least my men and I could do! You three are the ones who saved us from death or worse – and possibly saved our new agency as well. And on top of it, giving us the credit for saving the Franconium when we all know you Secret Service folk did the work?"

Both men understood the reasons for that. Tem, Amanda and Jimmy could take credit at least in secret for 'Presidio Pete' Yerba's arrest all right. But foiling Yerba's larger scheme called for something more. Yerba wasn't the only one gunning for the Justice Department's newest bureau. There were plenty of folks in Congress doing their best to foil even basic cooperation between the Treasury Department's law enforcement officers and these new Investigators. If Charles Bonaparte's agents were going to endure, they needed all the positive publicity they could get. Having the gratitude of the French government didn't hurt either. And a word in the right ears had ensured that France and the State Department sent more – and more competent – representatives than Flemings to escort the dangerous Franconium hydrate on the remainder of its journey through the country.

"Helping us with cleaning out and packing up that old attic was a major help too," Tem reminded him. And a risky one. But here also Wickersham felt he ought to be the more grateful party.

"Dealing with a full hazard obstacle course designed by the legendary agents Artemus Gordon and James West, you mean?" Wickersham looked out at his crew enjoying the picnic. "It's done us good. We needed the training and test of our observation skills, especially if we're going to be facing more like Yerba. I daresay lax building security and false guards won't catch us so easily again. Pity about the real guards, poor devils."

The memory of the corpses unearthed a day after the incident sobered them both. The Secret Service agents, Investigators and Flemings might have escaped with their lives, but not everyone had been so lucky. 'Presidio Pete's original crimes had earned him Treasury's enmity, but Wickersham assured the Wests that Justice would make him pay the price. They were keeping a nice, warm chair reserved for Yerba, Wickersham said, before he goes someplace even hotter.

But today, enjoying sunny but cooler weather, neither man wanted to dwell on such grim topics, especially when there were accomplishments to celebrate and a picnic to attend.

"So have Mr. Bonaparte and the rest come up with the definitive name for your agency yet?" Tem asked.

"So I'm told," Wickersham sighed. "At least until someone changes their mind again! You know, I rather like the name your wife chose for us."

Tem snorted at the joke. The freshman Investigators had been so gushing and enthusiastic over the Secret Service agents' defeat of their captor, the additional training and tips they'd gotten from the three in the days since, their gadgets, the attic, their famous fathers' reputations, everything, that Amanda had murmured to Tem – without realizing Wickersham could hear – they ought to be called the Gee! Men.

"It has a certain ring to it," Wickersham grinned.

"Ah, it'll never catch on," Tem predicted.

Their pleasant conversation was interrupted by Jimmy running up to them with new marching orders for himself and Tem.

"Mandy says it's almost time to cut the cake, and she wants you to bring up another keg of root beer from the cold cellar while I help her pass out the plates!" Jimmy related. "Again! Older sisters are tyrants, aren't they?"

"I wouldn't know," Tem reminded him. "I never had one."

The comment caused the younger man to pause and consider for a moment as an odd, bemused look came over his face.

"Yeah . . . ." he whispered, shaking his head and then smiling sadly. "I guess some people just aren't lucky that way."

Message delivered, Jimmy bounded back to where the tyrant in question was waiting for him, while Wickersham joined Tem on his own appointed task.

"A remarkable young man," Wickersham said. "Difficult to believe he's a full field agent at only sixteen. Very remarkable!"

"You can say that again," Tem laughed. "He's even writing up our official report on the whole Chicago Federal Building incident and Yerba's gang's capture."

"Really?" Wickersham raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

"With plenty of judicious proofreading and editing from 'manda and me, of course," Tem added. There were several details concerning Torres' hypno-lamp and Amanda's clever use of it that would have to be left out, and a slightly more dignified explanation of where and how they had gotten the large quantity of sleep gas compound from invented. But that would be easy enough. No one was likely to believe some of the crazy stories Yerba's gang was trying to use to explain what they were up to and what had really happened in the Federal building. The Investigators had been sworn not to divulge such 'classified' information either. "Denver and Washington want to take advantage of Jimmy's memory for detail and reporting skills," Tem explained. "They're encouraging him to get in the practice. So are we. He's already come up with the perfect title for his report too."

"Oh?" Wickersham inquired.

Both men got a good laugh, though Wickersham didn't know whether Tem was pulling his leg or not when he gave out the title for Jimmy's report:

How I Spent My Summer Vacation.


End file.
